Vino in Villany

The best thing about wine tasting in Hungary is that the many of the vineyards that dot the landscape have cellars in their respective village. Each village has a street lined with colorful old doors that open to tasting rooms which then open to dark cellars that extend deep into the hillside. This makes it possible to taste wine from many different winemakers, without getting in the car!

The village where were we staying, Villany, has the perfect wine tasting street with lots of wine cellars and eateries.



Off the main drag, pictured above there are little country roads lined with vineyards and all the inhabitants are into making wine. These people were installing wine making facilities right in their yard.

Just in time, because harvest season is obviously about to begin!

We spent the morning wandering through Villany drinking up as many of the local grape varieties as possible. Mind you, a tasting is really a whole glass of wine and costs anywhere from 75 cents to maybe 10 bucks for the most expensive wine we could find. Our glasses of wine averaged about $2 which allowed us to drink A LOT OF WINE. The receipt from our hotel is at least 4 pages long, mostly consisting of "tastes" of wine.

After wandering around the village we stopped and soaked up the wine with some "salty" strudel.


Then headed back to the hotel to play at the spa.


We hooked up with a group of Americans and Hungarians in the afternoon and hired the "Retro Bus" to drive us to the neighboring village of Villánykövesd for more tasting.

Unfortunately because its harvest time, many of the cellars were closed. But we found two young guys sitting at their cellar and spent a good deal of time tasting their wine.


They took us deep into the cellar for a barrel tasting of their cab franc/merlot.



We also tasted their rose which was in the process of fermenting. It tasted a bit like a smoothie.


After drinking up all they had to offer, we wandered through the basically empty town until we found a man crushing his recent harvest. I even got a chance to take over for a while.


The day ended with a delightful meal of deconstructed beef stew and a successful tasting of Unicum.