Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Hoop Wines (Mátra, Hungary)

Zoltán Németi & Zoltán Kerekes

Gyöngyöspata, Mátra (Hungary)
This was really a quick visit here, we're here at Hoop Wines which is run by two childhood friends, Zoltán Németi and Zoltán Kerekes who make wine from a small overall surface 1,5 hectare, plus from the equivalent of 0,5 hectare of purchased grapes, for a total yearly production of 5 to 6000 bottles. We're here in a family house in the village that was refurbished as a small winery facility by Zoltán Kerekes who had himself a 10-year experience working in a local winery. Zoltán Németi is himself an IT specialist in Budapest and spends his weekends here for this venture.
This small facility has all the hygiene requirements needed for a safe winemaking, mostly there's the main room which we could call the chai (they press inside), and a barrel room on the side which does the job of a cellar. Asked if they got European funding for these investments, they say no, the conditions for these subsidies are difficult to gather and unfortunately they are designed mostly for big wineries, so they funded this by themselves. They're happy to have this facility which is now easy to clean and keep clean, something essential for thoughtful winemaking. Their first commercial vintage was in 2019 (before it was more like experimental and for themselves and friends).

Mátyás Páger (Mátra)

Mátyás Páger in his cellar

Gyöngyöspata, Mátra (Hungary)
Here we are again in the village of Gyöngyöspata in the Mátra wine region, and it was a short stroll from one cellar street to another and we reached this haven of quietness where Mátyás Páger, his wife Judit and his brother's family were finishing their picnic outside one of his cellars (this is the one where he readies and labels his bottles). I had met Mátyás a couple months ago in Budapest at Vinopiano, an excellent wine bar with rebel wines. His day job is working in real estate in the big city but his passion is to make wine here in Matra from a small surface mostly located in the prized terroir of Gereg. His farming is fully organic and in the cellar he doesn't use additives, doesn't filter his reds and uses minimum so2 if any.

Mátyás Páger's yearly production is around 6000 bottles, mostly Kékfrankos (Blaufränkisch) but also Grüner Veltliner, Pinot Gris, Rajnai rizling (Rhein Riesling). Mátyás also uses this tunnel cellar (which has the typical size of old artisan facilities in this country) to age the wine in bottle before shipping. Even for his small production it's a pretty small storage place (happily, part of the bottles were already shipped and we could walk through the place) and he'll use an additional cellar nearby to complement room. the cellar front shack seems to be standing alone on this picture on left but in fact this cellar street overgrown with trees and greenery is also lined with cellars (some like this one having a small building in front, some not), most of these cellars being unused by villagers.

Balazs Palya (Mátra)

Balázs & Julianna in a parcel

Szűcsi, Mátra (Hungary)
We're here in a village named Szűcsi (pronounce sweetchie or something like that) which sits along a gentle slope surrounded by vineyards (see the pic on the left, best viewpoint on the village for Balázs who stops there when he has something to do in his parcels). The village is located probably much less than 3 kilometers as the crow flies from Gyöngyöspata and that's where Balázs Palya (who has a day job as electrical engineer) and his girlfriend Julianna (or Julcsi) Mészáros (who works in the logistics sector) started a small wine farm in 2019 with little grapes to work with, part from their garden, part given to them by Julianna's family. This is a passion thing for them and their prime intent when they started this was to remain sustainable both in the vineyard and the cellar, just let the wine express itself by its own. They do everything by hand they have no machine whatsoever in the cellar, no pump and they don't add anything in the wine, not even sulfites, and no fining, no filtration. Balázs understands that to make wine, 70 % of the job is in the vineyard and 30 % in the cellar, and if you have a great soil, you'll get a great vine which will yield great grapes, and almost without doing anything after that the wine should be great.

Their production is about only 1500 or 2000 bottles a year from 1,2 hectare of productive grapes, so it's really a very artisanal thing powered by passion and not a business mindset. The yield is like one or 1,5 kilogram of grapes per vine maximum. The vines are 20 years old on average, let aside the older parcel which is 50. For example the Chardonnay was planted in 2002 and the Kékfrankos was planted the year he was born, in 1997.

András Kovács (Mátra)

András & Kinga in front of their cellar

Gyöngyöspata, Mátra (Hungary)
The wine region of Mátra sits on the Mátra hills which, on the way from Budapest when you drive north east to Eger and Tokaj and it grows a majority of white varieties. Mátra is sitting on volcanic slopes as many of these hills were volcanoes I guess (see pic on left, sorry for the pylons in the foreground), and while the wine region keeps a low profile on the international scene (compared to Tokaj and Eger) I was myself suprised to learn that it is the 2nd largest among the 22 wine regions of Hungary (#19 patch on the linked map). The deep history roots of this region shows up in the many cellars found in every village there, it's pretty easy to spot them because in Hungary cellars are often built just outside the villages and away from the farms (closer to the parcels I guess), with a tiny house sitting in front of the opening, this house being used a a chai, to store cellar tools & basket press, and of course gather with friends and family and drink wine....

Like I've seen in the Loire for example, there's a new generation of winemakers in Mátra bringing in their will to make wine for the love of wine and on small surfaces, they're often outsiders as opposed with the mainstream established who try to keep making commercial wine that kind of lost its connection to truth and terroir. People like András Kovács and his wife Kinga Tóth bring indeed a new life in here beginning with demanding requirements in the vineyard management that like elsewhere you don't often find on commercial wineries. András works in IT in Budapest (he's been also one of the wine writers at A Borrajongó, a rich resource on wine including of course Hungarian wine) and Kinga in urban engineering and they spend many weekends here in Mátra.

Capitaine tasting (Paris)

The tasting overflowing in the street

Le Marais, Paris
This is small natural-wine tasting named Pépites that took place in the Marais on a side street (impasse Guéménée near the Place des Vosges) in a restaurant named Capitaine, I would have missed it if not tipped about it by Lexie and later Aaron (these Americans are well connected!). This month of april has been mostly fair and sunny in France and in Paris, with a little breeze that prevented top reach high temperatures. . The terraces of course enjoyed in this spring 2022 a solid rebound after two years of restraints and downright suppression, and parks, gardens & lawns were full as well (pic on left : Place des Vosges nearby).

Tastings have taken the same path, even in small venues, people would elbow their way in cramped spaces without masks and worries. The fee for this professional tasting was a mere 5 €, and guess what you could taste for that humble fee and the great wine people you coud chat with ?? That's one of the reasons Paris still offers opportunities regarding wine that few if any other town can offer.

Domaine Perrault-Jadaud (Loire)

Tanguy Perrault & Anne-Cécile Jadaud

Chançay, Vouvray area (Loire)
Here I am on the outskirts of the charming village of Chançay, sitting against the slopes lining the Loire river valley.
Anne-Cécile and Tanguy who started their domaine in 2009 were initially teachers at the wine school of Amboise (Lycée Viticole) where they met. Longing for the vigneron life instead of merely teaching the skills, they ended making the step, first training their hand on a small parcel (0.5 hectare) all the while keeping their day job at the technical school, then later quitting for good as the domaine grew in surface (it now makes about 8 hectares with 7 hectares in production).

Before that, Anne-Cécile (who is from Tours) had done her training in Montpellier [Languedoc] where she got her oenology degree (DNO) and Tanguy (who is from Brittany) got his viticulture/oenology degree in Bordeaux. Otherwise they had no family in winemaking or growing, so their domaine was created from scratched, beginning with a few rentals.

I asked why they chose this area close to Vouvray (and Amboise as well), Anne-Cécile says that Tanguy had worked at Clos Baudouin in Vouvray where one of the staff there [Jean Penillot, not sure of the spelling] who had himself a few parcels lended him one of his own, that's how he and Anne-Cécile started working near here. They looked for other parcels to rent around, bought a few others when possible and that's how they grew step by step, to one hectare, then 2 hectares, then jumping to 4 hectares and so on.

Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux tasting

We had in Paris recently the tasting of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux where the wines of 2019 were poured to the invited professionals. The event took place like usual now in the magnificient setting of the Carreau du Temple. The event was initially scheduled to take place early february but the rebound of the pandemic resulted in the postponing to the 3rd week of march, and when we received the invitations by mail in mid-february we were noticed to show a vaccination document (or passe sanitaire) but in between the rules had been lifted. Anyway things seem to go back to normal with spring tastings resuming. This was a monday of course so that sommeliers and restaurateurs could come during their day off. There was a queue at the door at opening time but not that long compared to a few years ago.

For your information, the UGCB is a group created in the early 1970s with the goal to put in the spotlight the 14 Bordeaux appelations with Grands Crus : Pessac-Léognan, Graves, Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, Pomerol, Listrac-Médoc, Moulis-en-Médoc, Haut-Médoc, Médoc, Margaux, Saint-Julien, Pauillac, Saint-Estèphe, Sauternes and Barsac. The group orgnizes tasting and promotion events not only in France but abroad, including North America, Asia and Europe.

Vinopiano, Budapest wine bar

The counter and bottle wall

Budapest, Hungary
Here is Vinopiano, this wine bar made its debut on the other side of the Danube on Bartók Béla út and was transfered here because from what I understand the investor behind the venue found another location on Pest side along Tűzoltó utca on premises large enough so that they could fit both a kert (or Biergarten with a ruin pub touch) on the surface and the wine bar in a basement. Wine bars (usually doubling as wine shops) dealing with natural wine have been opening here and there in Budapest in the last few years but this one gets this relaxed approach that makes it more familiar for those of us used to the bohemian laidback atmosphere of the French natural wine bars.

The easygoing feel may also have to do with the location, Tűzoltó utca is off the beaten track, a bit off-center it's not the classy (but rather cold) 5th kerület nor the crowded 7th' party district in the former Jewish Ghetto. It is certainly closer to where young Hungarians live and thus more neighborhoody, but still at easy reach for an ousider : take tramway 4 or 6 to Corvin Negyed and from there a short walk along Tűzoltó utca 22.
The street view of the building shows a nondescript facade but with the backlit stencil signs you immediately feel there's more than that underground. This visit took place in the evening of the 23rd of february, in the night when the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, we live through very dangerous times and hope it stops...

An other era and perspective on wine

Who loves wine, loves life

It is good to remind that along history the vision and understanding on things has evolved continuously. What you believed as rock solid decades ago evaporates overnight, and this in many fields (today's righteous certitudes will follow the same path, be sure of that). This story is not only an interlude while waiting a warmer season but a reminder on times where optics were totally different... These posters date from, say, around 1915 to the late 1960s'. Since the censorship law of 1991 there has been of course no positive communication campaign in France regarding wine, everything now unfolding instead by word of mouth and undercover. But on the bright side the natural-wine milieu is certainly the most vibrant in emphasizing the healthy and joyful nature of this age-old beverage...

Bistrot Paul Bert tasting

Festive street window

11th arrondissement, Paris
This is another tastingI went to in the vibrant 11th to recently (actually in early december...) and this was my last tasting in that year (not that there weren't more, this season was hot, but I was busy or away afterwards). This professional tasting was organized by Solenne Jouan, the young woman behind Vins Eléments, she is a distribution agent and through this structure she deals only with living wines, selling to professionals in Paris. The young sommelière worked at Le Baratin, Saturne and Bistrot Paul Bert (all hot spots for real wines/real food) before setting up her own thing.

The tasting took place at both the Bistrot Paul Bert (I linked to their wine list) and L'Ecailler du Bistrot next door, two venues that work in tandem (also owned by Bertrand Auboyneau and Gwenaëlle Cadoret). These are good places to hang around for good wine, especially now that mass tourism has receded (yes, there was also kind of a mass tourism for natural-wine venues a couple years ago until 2019...), there's a little more chance to find a seat now. Plus, these venues have the feel of an authentic patina, nothing overstated, and you really feel at ease in there.