Szekszárd Harvest Festival

September and October are my favorite times of the year and we've been having really lovely weather for the last few weeks, so loads of weekend excursions to write about before the cold and wind come and blow it all away around mid-November, when this blog will go into gloomy winter rumination mode, and probably develop a deep fascination with various fatty pork products, with or without sour cream and cabbage.

But for now, sunny days are here and none is more sunnily spent than a Saturday at the Szekszárd Harvest Festival, about 2 hours south of Budapest. I figured out a few years ago that Szekszárd was putting out some of the best reds in Hungary at a respectable price, a view shared by numerous experts, but for some reason it is the only one of Hungary's half-dozen or so world-class wine regions that I had not visited yet. So, when my local wine merchants at the Borkápolna (Wine Chapel) kindly informed me that they would be sending a bus down for the festival this weekend, I signed us right up.

I'll write more about the Borkápolna in some later post. It really is a chapel. For wine. Great guys. I've been to a few tasting there over the years, but hadn't gone on any of these tours they run to different wine regions. For Botond and Jani, the trip also doubled as a chance to survey the new wines on a commercial basis, so we would get the benefit of their discernment as well.

Hungary makes a lot of wine. Most, of course, is plonk for simple souls, including some really topnotch plonk that this simple soul can't tell apart from real wine, but an increasing portion is made to global standards. Hungarian wine used to be on a par with wine anywhere else, but for 40 years the Communists were sloshing it all into one big barrel and exporting much it off by the tanker load to sun-starved Comintern captive trading partners, whereas the rest of the wine world was at the same time developing new technologies, expertise, and of course tastes, not to mention a clutch of new competitors. So, after 1989 when Hungarian winemaking was both unshackled and tossed to the mercy of the marketplace, there was a certain amount of catch-up to be done. And I think this is part of the attraction, as it is one of the areas of Hungarian life where we can unambiguously see progress being made (despite a couple of rainy summers and poor harvests lately) in a sector composed (albeit not exclusively) of Hungarian producers and not the foreign-owned multis or somesuch, and these winemakers can be mini celebrities in this wine world. The wine regions also attract a good deal of domestic (and some international) tourism, so it's also a great way for urban dwellers to feel a connection to the land.

On Saturday morning we showed up at the chapel and dutifully sucked down our glasses of apricot pálinka to ensure a fortuitous journey and boarded the minibus together with Botond and Jani, their partners partners Cecilia and Zsófia and half a dozen other amiable wine freaks. We reached Szekszárd around noon in beautiful September weather, not a cloud in the sky. Setting a 10 pm rendezvous for the return trip, the driver buggered off to go fishing somewhere.

First, we took a stroll around Szekszárd, with its attractive main square, and had some lunch before the crowds showed up. At these festivals you can also find a wide variety of handicrafts and artisanal foods and whatnot. This one also had a beauty contest to establish who is the cutest young lady in Szekszárd that year, and a scarecrow contest. I only saw one scarecrow though, so I assume she was the winner. No crows though, so she must have been good at her job.

Then it was time for the parade, which included several folk dance troupes from all over Hungary and Transylvania along with musical accompaniment (I had never seen a cello in a marching band before), various local school groups folk singing and/or folk dancing, and cowboys from the Great Plain cracking their whips menacingly (I've tried it, whip cracking is tiring work!).

Now it's time for the wine. There were about 30 local producers set up. Here are Botond and Jani at the Bősz Adrián tent, which wine guru Rob also suggested we visit. Botond is the biggest guy I know in Hungary. He likes to call me "Tiny". We started with a few token whites, mainly whites made from red grapes, for example a white kadarka (Hungaricum), then moved on to the reds that this area is famous for.

The great thing about these festivals is that the prices are set in decilitres, but winemakers are happy to pour  half-decileters or smaller quantities, so it's possible to try a lot of different wines without undue adverse effect.

These are the Szekszárd area producers I like the best:

Larger established producers, probably can find them outside of Hungary:

Bodri, Vesztergombi (particularly his Turul cuvée), Tűzkő (in English)

And smaller up-and-coming producers that are probably even hard to find here, but have some exceptional wines at a decent price:

Bősz Adrián, Posta (particularly his Cabernet Franc), Hetényi (particular his Syrah)

At 10 pm just as the party was getting going (and it was really going) it was time to find our bus for the trip home. And then I had to work until all day until midnight on Sunday the next day, in case anyone thinks it's the Life of Riley over here. Need to spend more time in Szekszárd and visit some of these wineries.