High-end bull’s blood: St. Andrea Merengő 2021

With a bunch of friends I took a look at a few Hungarian flagship reds in December. These all have some history, in some cases stretching over two decades. They are very well-known (in Hungary) and widely distributed; they are partly or entirely blends of Bordeaux varieties (not surprisingly, as they were created in the late 90s or in the 2000s, inspired by international cult reds).

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Aged supermarket wine with a twist: Séguret Les Aumoniers 2018 from Lidl

After my recent rant on the ageability of Southern Rhone reds, this came as a reminder that I was probably too harsh. Here we have a humble supermarket  villages wine – a so called “named” village, Seguret – which I bought many years ago for 6 Euros and which was hardly made to age this long (it’s over 6 years old now). Yet this is not declining at all, to my biggest surprise. I think it’s even better than after release!

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Györgykovács Imre Olaszrizling 2022, Somló, Hungary

Györgykovács Imre is a Hungarian winemaker legend, famous of making tiny quantities of a few white varieties in the Somló wine region. I find his wines more balanced than many from the region and also quite restrained. This is the latest release of his olaszrizling (welschriesling) and it reminds me of the other vintages I tasted in the past, the style (and quality) is quite reliable.

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