I quite like what the Bock crew brings out from Hungary’s native kadarka grape. With just a touch of oak this fragile variety becomes a bit more serious, yet does not lose its charm – being light and so drinkable.
Bock is one the most well-known names in Hungary, one that even not wine drinking people are familiar with. Big, expensive reds made them famous three decades ago, when Hungarian wine started basically from scratch (after the Communist rule, which ended in 1989), but they make lots of cheap(ish) wine for supermarkets.
Kiss Gábor is a well-known Villány producer, but he operates on a lesser scale then big names like Gere or Bock. What I tasted from him in the past did not make me a fan, but his 2022 reds are a completely different story. I liked his cabernet franc quite a lot so I bought a bottle of his entry level Rouge 364, and it’s actually almost as good its pricier brother.
That’s exactly how most Hungarian roses taste like. Continue reading
From the Bordeaux varieties it’s cabernet franc which is the most accepted and famous in Hungary. And not just because Villány declared it as its main variety, although no other region focuses on it to this extent. I tried four recently, and I was really happy with only one of them, the Kiss Gábor; the others are not entirely convincing and some are also overpriced.