The first review

The first review of my unusual Pinot Grigio is in...

It’s from wine expert and influencer Janina Doyle (@eatsleep_winerepeat).

"Not as crazy and funky and weird as I was expecting....”

I then asked her if she’d ever tasted a Pinot Grigio like it before?

“No, not really,” she replied. “And, to be honest, this has got a lot more structure and savouriness than I would expect. I’ve left this out of the fridge for an hour because I expect with an orange wine it shouldn't be too cold... It’s medium bodied. It’s not really big and bold, but there’s this lovely kind of texture to it as well... This would be an absolutely great food wine. If you’re not an orange wine lover, it’s not gonna be for you. But I actually think, the tannins are in line, the fruits are in balance, the structure is good.”

‘This would be an absolutely great food wine’

In her podcast she recommends having it with grilled halloumi, spiced couscous, olives and salted nuts.

It's my first experimental wine, but others will follow later in the year. This 2021 wine is from Slovenia. In 2022 I made 6 wines in 4 countries (Slovenia, Hungary, Austria and Georgia). This year I aim to do something similar but in Spain, Italy, Croatia and Moldova.

#wineandfood #winetourism #winetravel #slovenianwine #orangewine #amberwine #flyingwinemaker #experimentalwine #pinotgrigio

Not so crazy and funky after all

The first review of my unusual Pinot Grigio is in...

It's from influencer Janina Doyle (@eatsleep_winerepeat): 

"Not as crazy and funky and weird as I was expecting...."

 I then asked her if she'd ever tasted a Pinot Grigio like it before?

"No, not really," she replied. "And, to be honest, this has got a lot more structure and savouriness than I would expect. I've left this out of the fridge for an hour because I expect with an orange wine it shouldn't be too cold.... It's medium bodied. It's not really big and bold, but there's this lovely kind of texture to it as well... This would be an absolutely great food wine. If you're not an orange wine lover, it's not gonna be for you. But I actually think, the tannins are in line, the fruits are in balance, the structure is good."

In her EatSleepWineRepeat podcast, she recommends having it with grilled halloumi, spiced couscous, olives and salted nuts.

It's my first experimental wine, but others will follow later in the year. This 2021 wine is from Slovenia. In 2022 I made 6 wines in 4 countries (Slovenia, Hungary, Austria and Georgia). This year I aim to do something similar but in Spain, Italy, Croatia and Moldova.

#wineandfood #winetourism #winetravel #slovenianwine #orangewine #amberwine #flyingwinemaker #experimentalwine #pinotgrigio

Creating a unique base wine

I return to Hungary to craft an unusual blend for the second fermentation in bottles…

Winemaker Szilárd Nádas greets me with the exciting news that a Michelin-starred restaurant in Hungary has requested a sample of his 2018 Pearl of Victoria sparkling wine.

“They want something nobody else has” and Szilárd’s Nádas Borműhely is the only winery in the world producing a classic-method sparkling wine from Viktória Gyöngye, a Hungarian crossing of Seyve-Villard 12375 and table grape Pearl of Csaba.

Szilárd shows me into his cellar, which dates from 1879. He takes me through all his base wines, as I’ve come here to put a blend together for my first sparkling wine.

The wines have completed their fermentations, been racked off the gross lees and have had some SO2 added.

The ancient cellar at Nádas Borműhely, where I am making my first sparkling wine. Photo: Chris Boiling

The Chardonnay and Pinot Gris taste amazing and are destined for Nádas Borműhely’s Etyeki Pezsgő (the collective name for top sparkling wines from Etyek-Buda, Hungary’s first PDO for sparkling wines). Although Szilárd usually makes varietals, he is barrel-fermenting and blending these two varieties – two of the four grapes permitted for Etyeki Pezsgő – to create his new flagship sparkling wine. “We choose the two best barrels for the blend. That will be our crown wine,” he says.

All the base wines taste great. When I raise my concerns about my ability to blend a good base wine, Szilárd reassures me: “If the base wines are good, the sparkling wine will be good.”

Although I could be like a child in a sweet shop and take a bit of everything, I am wedded to the idea of producing the world’s first sparkling wine made from Viktória Gyöngye and Grüner Veltliner. It’s what I came here for at the beginning of September, when my crazy #harvest2022 adventure began.

Szilárd Nádas collects the Pearl of Victoria for our blending trials. Photo: Chris Boiling

Szilárd (above) pours me the ’22 Pearl of Victoria sparkling base. “It’s beautiful,” he says with a smile as he hands me the glass.

I agree. I’m genuinely surprised by how delectable an unknown grape variety can be. “That’s my favourite sparkling base of the year,” Szilárd adds.

It has “the perfect” amount of alcohol for a base wine (10.16%), “beautiful, nice big acidity” (8.59g/L) and a pH of 2.88.

The aroma is particularly intense because the wine is still cloudy.

The Pearl of Victoria, I think, tastes fantastic as a base wine. It’s got crispy apple aromas and flavours. It’s a real revelation. The Grüner in oak is on the edge of being a lovely still wine. The Grüner in stainless steel is also mouth-wateringly appetising. They both have pear aromas and flavours, with notes of cinnamon in the barrel-fermented version (which has higher alcohol and slightly lower acidity, probably as a result of the yeasts). But will the apples and pears complement each other? Will the sum of the parts be greater than the parts themselves? Is there a reason they aren’t considered natural blending partners?

Szilárd puts me on the spot and asks what blend I had in mind. I pluck some figures from thin air: 60% Pearl of Victoria (because I was so impressed with the flavours of the base wine), 20% Grüner from the tank and 20% Grüner from the barrel. “If there is a little bit of oaky part, that’s always good,” Szilárd nods.

We taste the blend. Something is missing.

“I would put more barrel,” Szilárd declares.

I suggest 60% Grüner and 40% Pearl of Victoria.

Szilárd seems inspired as he takes a 100ml measuring cylinder to the tanks again. He returns with a blend that’s 50% Pearl of Victoria, 25% Grüner from the barrel and 25% Grüner from the tank. This version sings. There’s no other word for it. Like the Grüner from the barrel, it’s on the edge of being a good still wine. “You can feel the barrel,” Szilárd says. “It’s not too much, it’s quite elegant. I prefer this.”

It’s balanced and has a long finish. I can imagine it with bubbles and more autolytic influence.

“Acidity is good, alcohol level is good, nice flavours. I like it,” he adds.

We continue to sip our samples.

“Very fresh acidity, very citrusy. The flavours of both (varieties),” Szilárd concludes.

“It’s a blend I have never done.”

I’ve only been in the cellar 40 minutes and we’ve come up with the blend at the second time of sampling. I feel like we should go through a few more options but Szilárd is so excited by this blend’s potential that I can’t suggest a change. We decide that we’ll leave the wines where they are for another couple of months to clarify naturally and also so the Grüner can soak up a little more structure from the oak. The wine in the barrel will be stirred every other week “for more contact with the lees”.

There is only one barrel of barrel-fermented Grüner, so Szilárd has to check that he has enough left for his own Grüner sparkling wine. It works out fine. He can produce 600 bottles for me. He will put the blend in bottles for the second fermentation in the spring (after pruning).

After ten minutes discussing the next steps, we raise our glasses and toast each other. The Pearl of Victoria aromas are beginning to show… “It’s beautiful. I could drink it now,” Szilárd says.

A few weeks later I call him to check on the wine’s progress. Szilárd tells me the three different wines have now been blended and, when the cellar warms up to 10°C, he will add some Bentonite to clarify the wine, then do the first filtration.

I ask him about the Michelin-starred restaurant. “The sommelier loved it,” he replies, “but there was pressure by the owner, so they had to choose a Prosecco!”

A modern wine - made in a qvevri in Georgia

My #harvest2022 adventure continues in Georgia. Although I’m making a skin-contact wine in a qvevri, I’m using all the latest techniques – including chilling the qvevri to -1°C to receive the grapes, controlling the temperature of the fermentation, and keeping the cap submerged with French oak staves...

Kindzmarauli Marani, where I’m making a modern qvevri wine. Photos: Chris Boiling

The peaks of the Greater Caucasus Mountains, separating Georgia and Russia, now have snow on them. The rocky riverbeds are flowing with life once more. Shepherds now camp out near the water. Sheep, cows and horses, brought down from higher pastures, now clog the roads on my way to Kindzmarauli Marani, where I am making a modern qvevri wine.

It feels like summer has turned to winter without blinking for autumn. Yet only last week I was picking white grapes here in the Alazani Valley, in the heart of Georgia’s primary wine-growing region, Kakheti.

I’m feeling fortunate and thankful I was able to find some grapes to continue my challenge of making eight wines in four countries in one vintage. The 2022 harvest was almost over in the east of Georgia when I landed from my harvests in Slovenia, Austria and Hungary, but it wasn’t until I saw the snow on the mountaintops and the migration of farm animals that I realised how close I came to missing out.

Another view of Kindzmarauli Marani. The two qvevri in the foreground are where I’m making my modern qvevri wine.

I hadn’t helped my cause by insisting on making an amber wine in a qvevri using lesser-known Georgian grape varieties – basically I wanted to avoid Georgia’s ubiquitous grapes, the high-yielding white Rkatsiteli and red Saperavi, planted to satiate the Russian market. There’s nothing wrong with them – but I didn’t want too much competition for my one-qvevri wine.

Picking white, aromatic grapes so late in the season – when some of the Saperavi in the marani was already undergoing malo – created two problems, which steered the course of this wine:

• The grapes came in with 15% potential alcohol. Would native yeasts struggle in such an environment?

• The grapes appeared healthy, apart from a little sunburn, but were they healthy enough for six months of skin contact in a qvevri?

Fresh from abandoning my skin-contact Furmint in Slovenia, I realised compromises were once more necessary and bowed to chief winemaker Mikheil Khmelidze’s suggestion that we make this wine in the most modern way possible (apart from the extended skin contact and use of qvevris).

I had come to Georgia expecting to make a natural, low-intervention wine using ancient winemaking techniques, but this amber wine is going to be the most high-tech of the wines made during my crazy #harvest2022 adventure.

My Kisi and Khikhvi grapes get picked in a vineyard where intervention was low.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the challenge of making a faultless amber wine in a qvevri in Georgia. A qvevri wine without any oxidative notes. A skin-contact qvevri wine that retained some of the lovely aromas of the two grape varieties we picked in a 7ha vineyard near the village of Argokhi (above). Just as many of the Rkatsiteli vineyards contain Mtsvane, many of the older Kisi vineyards also contain Khikhvi. While I try to learn the differences between the two early-ripening, floral, aromatic white varieties, the vineyard owner estimates my field blend will be 80% Kisi (below) and 20% Khikhvi.

The Kisi grape variety. Photo: Chris Boiling

These are both great Georgian grape varieties, whose time is coming. Indigenous to Kakheti, they can produce elegant European-style whites or layered amber qvevri wines in the traditional Georgian way.

The versatile Khikhvi (below), which has been around since the Middle Ages, can also produce semi-sweet, dessert and fortified wines (especially in the Kardenakhi PDO).

The versatile Khikhvi grape variety. Healthy apart from some sunburn. Photo: Chris Boiling

But in the rest of Kakheti they were harvested two or three weeks ago. In this vineyard in Argokhi, they have been left on the vine to gain more sugar and richness (and a higher price). They look clean and healthy but we’re not going to take any chances. This is ‘belt and braces’ winemaking; textbook stuff. We’re going to use all the tools of conventional winemaking. Perhaps it’s overkill. It’s certainly not how I expected to make a qvevri wine in Georgia.

Making wine in a clay vessel buried in the ground is a technique preserved in Georgia for thousands of years. It became part of Georgia’s identity through invasions by Persians, Romans, Ottomans, Mongols, and Soviets. In 2013, UNESCO added qvevri winemaking to its list of Humanity’s Intangible Cultural Heritage and, in 2021, qvevri was granted Protected Geographical Indication status, legally establishing Georgia as the place of origin and codifying its shape, capacity, raw materials and production method.

The tubes helped to cool the qvevris prior to receiving the grapes.

How the tubes were installed.

At Kindzmarauli Marani – part of the large Teliani Valley group – they are using the most modern qvevri-winemaking techniques. These include:

• Chilling the qvevri. Even though they are buried in the ground, the qvevris at Kindzmarauli Marani can be temperature controlled through cooling tubes (shown above before the qvevris' burial). When I arrive from the vineyard with 204 crates of mixed grapes, the two qvevris I’m using for the fermentation have already been set at -1°C. This means the grapes in the centre of the qvevri will be around 10°C while they adjust (for 24 hours) to their new life in clay.

• Keeping the cap submerged with French oak staves (see below).

Jumping out of the van which transported the grapes, I notice a young man who looks like he’s preparing to deal with a chemical spillage. He’s wearing fisherman’s waders, a hood, boots and gloves. He’s getting scrubbed with a brush and hosed down.

He’s the man going into my qvevris to clean them. When planning this leg of my project, I had imagined jumping in the qvevri myself and scrubbing the walls with pieces of cherry bark attached to a long pole, but things have moved on here. At Kindzmarauli Marani, Mikheil and his team don’t take any chances as far as hygiene is concerned. The man going into the qvevris to clean them is even piggybacked to the rim to keep his boots clean.

Cleaning the cleaner.

Cleaning the qvevri.

He lowers himself into the qvevri and disappears. First, he washes the inside with what they call ‘wine foam’ (basically a caustic soda solution). The qvevri is then rinsed with water, then with citric acid and then with ethanol. A sponge on a long pole is used to remove the water that can’t be pumped out. They wait ten minutes and then return to take out any newly formed puddle at the bottom of the qvevri. Then the rim is thoroughly cleaned again.

After cleaning, the qvevri is purged of oxygen with CO2.

The crates are unloaded into the destemmer, and whole berries are pumped into the qvevris. Enzymes, citric acid and sulphur are added as we can’t guarantee the health of every bunch of grapes. I know the ones I picked were healthy and free of damaged berries, but were the other pickers as picky?

The additions are mixed into the must by pumping it with CO2 bubbles.

The must is left overnight before turning the temperature up for a fermentation at 19-20°C and inoculation the next day with IOC RP15, a yeast for red wines. The yeast and nutrients were, again, stirred through with CO2 bubbles.

Fermentation started the next day. For the first couple of days, there were punchdowns every ten hours. Then, in an adjacent qvevri, I spotted a Saperavi fermentation bubbling vigorously with no sign of a cap. It was kept submerged by a neat little device. Tasting Saperavis with and without this device was a revelation – the one with the submerged cap already tasted smoother.

The device comprises eight thin French oak staves joined by a single stainless-steel bolt, and some netting. We removed some of the must so we could fit the device on top of the cap at the qvevri’s widest point. The netting was laid on top of the skins, then the staves were fanned out like the spokes of a wheel. A slit was made in the netting to make life easier for the lab technicians when they take their sugar readings (daily) and pH and TA readings (every other day). The rim of the qvevri was marked as a guide.

A nozzle was inserted into the slit and the must returned. As the cap rises, the contraption is pushed up, so it neatly fits to the walls of the qvevri and will bow upwards – keeping the cap submerged and gently pressing the grapes.

Once the fermentations finish, they will be inoculated for MLF.

The plan is to remove the skins in February or March, only keeping the free run for this wine (the skins will be pressed for a lower-tier wine or distilled for Georgia’s traditional spirit for toasts at feasts, chacha). The wine will then be returned to a clean qvevri for natural clarifying and maturation until August.

The qvevri will be sealed in the traditional way with wax or clay – but with a layer of nitrogen filling the headspace. It’s not how they did it thousands of years ago, but even an ancient technique like qvevri-winemaking needs an update every few millennia.

‘Even an ancient technique like qvevri winemaking needs an update every few millennia’

Adding Souvignier Gris to my modern amber blend

I’m back Austria to complete the harvest for his modern amber wine – a blend of two disease-resistant grape varieties. He says it’s the only #harvest2022 project of his in this “weird” vintage that has never been in doubt…

 The Souvignier Gris grapes look amazingly healthy after just one spray this year. Photo: Chris Boiling

“It’s been a good year for piwis,” Austrian winemaker Karl (‘Charly’) Renner declares as we wrap up #harvest2022 in Steiermark (Styria).

These disease-resistant varieties have come into their own in what winemakers in Central Europe keep telling me is a “strange”, “weird” or “extremely challenging” vintage, with the extremely hot and dry conditions of the summer followed by an extremely wet September. Charly says it’s been one of the toughest years for conventional grapes since the cool and wet 2014 and “you had to work hard” with them.

I’m back at BioWeingut Karl Renner, in southern Austria, to harvest the Souvignier Gris for my amber piwi blend. The late-ripening Souvignier Gris has good acidity and plenty of sugar (13.5% potential alcohol). I aim to blend it with the early-ripening Muscaris, picked two weeks ago and left on skins in two 350L amphorae. When this wine still had about 10-20g/L of sugar left, the skins were gently pressed and the wines were combined in a single amphora to complete their fermentation.

The Souvignier Gris is considered to be one of the best of the modern piwis – some say “the king of piwis”. It’s a pink-skinned grape with Seyval Blanc, Riesling and Traminer in its family tree.

We begin picking in fog. But, as the fog lifts, I can see the beauty of the valley stretching away from the steep slope where the 0.5ha of Souvignier Gris grows amid Steiermark’s more conventional Vitis vinifera varieties, such as Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.

Harvesting on the one dry day in a very wet week, the advantages of the new generation of piwis (from the German for fungal resistant, “pilzwiderstandsfähige”) are obvious.

The Souvignier Gris grapes (above) look amazingly healthy after just one spray this year and are easy to see. Some of the leaves around the clusters were removed in the summer, but Souvignier Gris is less vigorous than the Muscaris growing on top of the hill. “The canopy is easier to manage,” Charly confirms. “Souvignier Gris, you need one hour to remove the leaves around the bunches, get the shoots in the wires – they are more erect than Muscaris. In the same size area, for Muscaris you need two or three hours.” Muscaris also produces a lot of suckers, and the vines need de-suckering a couple of times per season.

“Souvignier Gris – it’s not so much a jungle, it’s more free,” Charly adds.

About 10% has succumbed to botrytis, but these berries are now dry. The Muscaris grapes, picked two weeks earlier, were totally free of disease. Charly says Muscaris has “very high resistance”.

Picking piwis is a relatively quick affair. We only have to pick out the odd grape that has been attacked by an insect.

It takes our small team of five pickers from Slovenia plus the Renner family (Charly, wife Maria, father Erwin, mother Walpurga) and me four hours to collect six bin-loads. The one downside of the small berries and thick skins is the lower yield from each bunch. Charly reckons each bin will produce about 220L of wine – whereas for other varieties it would be more like 250-280L. In 2021, five bins of Souvignier Gris filled five barriques.

The crushed and destemmed grapes are destined for a mixture of amphora and stainless steel for fermenting and will be aged in amphora and oak barriques.

In 2021, BioWeingut Karl Renner’s Souvignier Gris spent three months on full skins and until August on 20-30% skins, when it was given a gentle squeeze in the pneumatic press. The colour is a golden yellow and there is no hint of the ‘gris’ colour in the wine, despite this extended period of maceration.

The plan is to use several components of Souvignier Gris in the final blend – some with 72 hours’ skin contact in the press, some with two- or three-weeks’ skin contact, and some with six months or longer.

“Souvignier Gris is a variety that can stay a long time on the skins,” Charly confirms. “Now we know six months is not too much.”

He adds: “What we have to do is learn how to handle it and which is the right way to make the wine. Skin contact? Yes. How long? Which vessel?”

Of all the plans for my crazy #harvest2022 adventure – making six wines in four countries in one vintage – this piwi project was the only one that was never in doubt; the only one I haven’t had to amend because of this “challenging vintage”.

In between the two piwi harvests, I went to the Haloze hills in Slovenia to make a white wine with a talented young winemaker, Michael Gross of Vino Gross (above). I wanted to make a skin-contact Furmint with him but when I arrived and saw the state of some bought-in Šipon/Furmint, we agreed it wouldn’t be wise to macerate these grapes. Instead, we are making an unusual white blend – a co-fermentation of free-run Laški rizling (Welschriesling) and whole Traminer berries. More about this wine here.

My plans to make a Kadarka (a light and spicy red wine) with three producers in different regions of Hungary, using three different technologies (oak, steel and Flexcube), has also been dampened by the rain. While I’m picking the piwi, one of the Kadarka producers calls to say they won’t have enough good quality grapes for my project…

“Everything is out of balance,” Charly Renner observes, as we lunch with the picking team, overlooking the freshly-plucked vines. He’s talking about the weather in 2022.

I nod in agreement and marvel at the organic pink grapes in the bins (above), heading to BioWeingut Karl Renner’s small winery in Pössnitz. They look glorious. They look like the future to me. 2022 has proven they can cope with the weirdest and strangest growing conditions.

The last bin heading off is from the top rows of young vines, which replaced a piwi that didn’t work here: Cabernet Jura. Charly shows me the one Cabernet Jura vine that he didn’t replace (above). The red grapes are not worth picking. “It’s not so resistant. Very thin skin and early ripening,” Charly points out, before making a general observation about piwis and a plus-point for Souvignier Gris: “The disadvantage with piwis is: some of them are too early with the background of climate change. Souvignier Gris is the opposite – there is always enough acidity. First, I thought you have too much sugar and acidity but after two or three years I realise you need this acidity. It’s the spine of the wine.”

It will be the spine of my amber piwi creation.

Making an amber wine from piwis

My crazy #harvest2022 adventure continues in Austria, where I plan to add another unusual wine to the Crazy Experimental Wines collection…

Karl Renner destems and crushes Muscaris grapes. Photos: Chris Boiling

There’s a hammock chair on the balcony at BioWeingut Karl Renner with staggeringly beautiful views of Steiermark (Styria), rightly described as the “green heart of Austria”. The balcony, above the winery and near the kitchen of the family home, looks like a wonderful place to relax. Karl ‘Charly’ Renner, who took over the family wine business in 1997, comes here to think but he finds it difficult to relax. All he sees is the work that needs doing in the family’s organically-farmed vineyards.

BioWeingut Karl Renner has 6.5ha of vines, including about 0.9ha of rented vineyards and 1.8ha of new-generation piwi grape varieties. The piwis cause much less stress than his other white varieties (Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Blanc, Morillon (Chardonnay), Muskateller, and Welschriesling).

In this “challenging vintage” – where there was much more disease pressure – he only sprayed the piwi vines once, with copper and sulphur, at the beginning of summer to prevent the fungus attacking older leaves. For one application on the piwis he used 1kg of Bordeaux mixture per hectare whereas for the conventional varieties he used 4kg.

Charly knows it’s been a tough year for the vines as he’s spotted some fungal diseases on two of the mildew-resistant piwis, Souvignier Gris and Chardonel. “This says the pressure was very high,” Charly states. For the first time, he may have lost 10% of these grapes to rot but he describes their performance in general as “super, wonderful”.

There is no sign of fungal diseases on the early-maturing Muscaris grapes (above). “Muscaris has very high resistance,” Karl confirms.

This is the grape I’ve come to harvest for my first piwi wine, as part of my crazy #harvest2022 adventure, which sees me making six wines in four countries in one vintage.

Like a growing number of winegrowers, I believe piwis – short for “pilzwiderstandsfähige” (resistant against fungal diseases) – are "the grapes of the future". They are resistant against the two main fungal threats in viticulture: Peronospora (downy mildew) and Oidium (powdery mildew). The modern generation of piwi varieties, such as Muscaris, Souvignier Gris and Chardonel, also have the potential to produce excellent wines. That’s what I’ve come to Styria to prove. Not only does Styria have amazing views, it also has the highest concentration of piwi vines (3% and growing).

“It’s the next step in organic farming,” Charly believes. “It’s the answer, so when you have the responsibility of a farm, of vineyards, and you have the chance to do it better than yesterday and you have the consciousness about that, you have to do it.

“Of course, on the other hand, it’s difficult to sell it because nobody knows about piwis. Nobody knows piwis exist.”

The Renners first planted piwis in 2011. These are the vines I’m helping to harvest, ten days earlier than last year.

The Muscaris grapes glisten in the morning sun (above). There are no signs of diseases and we’re only cutting out the berries that have been attacked by insects.

We fill six bins – one more than last year. I comment that this is impressive in a “challenging vintage” but Charly points out it probably has more to do with installing fencing to deter deer, escaping frost and hail, and the vines being more mature. “They are ready to give more grapes,” he states.

The vineyards below the balcony are growing varieties typical of Steiermark. But there is also some Souvignier Gris, planted in 2015, Chardonel (2016), and Blütenmuskateller (2020), which Charly plans to blend with the Muscaris in the future as they both have notes of citrus and nutmeg. Muscaris, Souvignier Gris and Blütenmuskateller are among the white grape varieties approved for use in Austrian Qualitätswein (quality wine).

My plan is to make a blend of early-maturing Muscaris and late-ripening Souvignier Gris, using a variety of winemaking techniques and featuring an element of skin contact.

The Muscaris, picked at 12.5% potential alcohol, is a crossing of Solaris and Muscat. It produces intensely scented, nutmeg and citrus aromas with some smoky notes, and has a strong, full-bodied taste, with intense acidity.

Souvignier Gris is a pink-skinned grape from the crossing of Seyval Blanc and Zähringer, which is a crossing of Riesling and Traminer. Some say the wines are reminiscent of Sauvignons, others Riesling, while others claim it is either neutral or slightly fruity.

“We have to learn what is possible with these varieties,” Charly (above) says. His Piwi Amber is 75% Muscaris and 25% Souvignier Gris. His Muscaris varietal features 5-6% of amber wine, which gives it “a little more spine”.

The plan

The Muscaris is handpicked in two lots, three days apart. The first grapes are to be left on skins in a tank for about eight days. “My experience is, it’s better not to leave it for too long,” Charly advises. “Three or four weeks on the skins is too long because piwis have more tannins than conventional varieties.”

But it’s also dependent on the rest of the harvest and finding the time to take out the skins. “I’ll taste it when the fermentation slows and maybe we can leave it a few days more. It’s not a fixed idea.”

After crushing and destemming, most of the second picking goes into the press for a short maceration “to help the aromas”. Some of the second picking is also pumped into two new amphorae from The Hungarian Amphora Project. Once the fermentation with native yeasts finishes, the wines will be combined into one amphora.

The other part will go into a large oak barrel.

The Souvignier Gris, with its loose berries and thick skins, will stay out until late September or early October – usually being picked about ten days after the Renners’ red grape, Zweigelt.

“It’s still green,” Charly says, after tasting the grapes on his way back to Pössnitz from the Muscaris harvest. “Souvignier Gris could have a lot of sugar but also high acidity. When you wait you have potential alcohol of 14-14.5%, which we think is too high. This year I was thinking maybe I can mix it with a little Pinot Blanc and Chardonnay.”

In 2020 the Renners’ Souvignier Gris had 13.5% alcohol. Most went into used oak barrels and some went into a stainless-steel tank. The 2021 is still bubbling. “It tastes good at the moment, but the wine is always busy,” Charly comments.

We agree that we may have to age the wine longer than many whites, because of the extra disease-fighting tannins in the piwi varieties, especially if we blend a large proportion of the skin-contact element and choose to bottle it unfined and unfiltered with low levels of sulphur.

If we age the blend in a large barrel, Charly points out, it will have to be checked and topped up regularly.

I ask him to take care of all the components until I can return for the blending session – as I have two wines to make across the border, in Slovenia.

There’s just time to take in one more amazing view....

From the edge of the Muscaris vineyard I can see well into Slovenia, almost as far as its oldest city, Ptuj – my next destination. There, I plan to make a white wine with one of my favourite grapes, Furmint, but this challenging vintage has taken its toll on this variety…

And so it begins...

My crazy #harvest2022 adventure is under way.

I plan to make eight wines in four countries in one vintage.

I know my limitations as a winemaker, so I am teaming up with people who know what they are doing. But I will be encouraging them to experiment or try something different – perhaps a technique that I’ve picked up from writing the winemaker interviews for Canopy.

The first wine is an unusual méthode traditionnelle featuring a unique blend of a disease-resistant variety and a grape that’s better known for producing still wines.

For this experiment, I’ve come to an up-and-coming sparkling wine region – Etyek-Buda, about 30km west of Hungary’s capital, Budapest. Etyek-Buda is Hungary’s first PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) for sparkling wines, and the first releases of ‘Etyeki Pezsgő’ are due in 2023, from the 2020 vintage.

The winemakers behind the Etyeki Pezsgő wines are trying to rebuild the reputation of Hungarian fizz and restore the beautiful town of Etyek to its place among the great wine capitals. József Törley was the first to recognise the region’s potential after returning from an apprenticeship at Louis Roederer in Reims at the end of the 19th century. He realised this cool region – with its limestone soils – had a good deal in common with the Champagne area and set up a winery for sparkling wine production in Budafok, south of Budapest. The business grew rapidly and Törley exported his wines around the world, setting up warehouses in Hamburg, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Paris to cope with demand from Germany, Scandinavia and France!

Two world wars, nationalisation and a switch in focus to high quantities for the Russian market erased the region’s reputation. But, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, there have been swift changes in winemaking in Etyek, with a return to private and family winemaking enterprises and renewed interest in producing high-quality sparkling wines.

My favourite wine from the region so far is Nádas Borműhely’s GV Brut Nature 2019 – 100% Grüner Veltliner, with 30% fermented in barrels. I loved the delicately spicy, almost peppery finish.

This wine meets two of the new PDO’s strict criteria:

• Traditional method wines with a maximum dosage of 12g/L of sugar;

• Minimum of 24 months’ ageing.

But it fails on the crucial third point:

• Grüner Veltliner is not one of the four permitted grape varieties for Etyeki Pezsgő. Although it’s one of the 40 authorised varieties grown in the region, the PDO regulations have restricted the permitted varieties to Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc.

Tamás Hernyák, of Etyek family winery Hernyák Estate and one of the driving forces behind the PDO application, admits that changes to the permitted varieties are possible in the future but these four are “a solid foundation, a good starting point”.

They want the region to become known for sparkling wines with medium intensity aromas of biscuit, roasted nuts and breadcrust, an elegant fruitiness on the palate, harmonious acidity, creamy texture and velvety bubbles.

That’s what I’m aiming for with my wine, but with less traditional grape varieties…

Before Törley opened his winery in 1882, the main grape varieties in the region were Kadarka, Dinka, Gohér, Rakszőlő, Hárslevelű, Mézes Fehér, and Sárfehér. By the mid-1970s, the key varieties were Mézes Fehér, Ezerjó, Hárslevelű and Olaszrizling (Welschriesling), with the Department of Viticulture of the University of Horticulture adding Chardonnay, Királyleányka, Rizlingszilváni, and Zöld veltelini (Grüner Veltliner). Another influx of new varieties came to the region in the 1980s, with large-scale plantings of Szürkebarát (Pinot Gris), Pinot Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, Irsai Olivér, Riesling, Muscat Ottonel and more Olazsrizling. There were also experimental plantings of Hungarian-bred grape varieties including Cserszegi fűszeres, Zenit, Zefír, Zengő, Karát, Mátra Muscat, and Viktória Gyöngye.

As well as using barrel- and tank-fermented Grüner Veltliner in my sparkling wine, I’m also going to use one of these Hungarian hybrids.

The winemaker behind my favourite Grüner Veltliner sparkling wine, Szilárd Nádas, also mentioned that he made a sparkling wine from Viktória Gyöngye, which translates as Pearl of Victoria. It’s not a grape I’ve come across before and a quick search on the internet revealed… absolutely nothing. I was intrigued.

Szilárd Nádas in the Pearl of Victoria vineyard. Photo: Chris Boiling

Viktória Gyöngye (Pearl of Victoria) bunches. Photo: Chris Boiling

This is what Pearl of Victoria looks like in the vineyard that Szilárd rents from Törley, Hungary’s largest sparkling wine producer. It has large clusters and berries, and the unusual feature is that the berries turn white and crunchy when ripe.

Szilárd tells me this white grape variety is a crossing of Seyve-Villard 12375 and table grape Pearl of Csaba. It was selected in 1966 and registered in 1995. It can also be found in Hungary’s Kunsági and Egri regions. Szilárd says he uses it because it was bred for sparkling wines and is resistant to fungal diseases and frost.

He has only sprayed the Pearl of Victoria vines four times this year, while his other varieties have received seven treatments. “It’s a very good variety,” he says, before outlining its many advantages: “It’s easy to grow, easy to produce, it’s very stable. If I could, I would produce two tanks but, at the moment, people have to know about it.”

Challenge accepted.

Szilárd says that his former employer, Törley, uses it in some blends. In fact, my Pearl of Victoria comes from the same plot of 32-year-old vines – probably the largest Viktória Gyöngye vineyard in the world: a whopping 1.5ha.

But, as far as he knows, he’s the only one producing a varietal sparkling wine from it.

“This variety is not listed in the region as a grape, so I cannot use the name of the village, I cannot use the name of the region on my labels. I don’t fucking care. Is it good or not? I sell 70% here,” he says, as we stand in his cellar, which dates from 1879. “So people will believe me or the taste.”

The harvest begins at Nádas Borműhely. Photo: Chris Boiling

The large Pearl of Victoria berries for his varietal and my blend were picked five days apart because the harvest was interrupted by heavy rain. The second picking, with higher potential alcohol and lower acidity, was added to the tank containing the first when it had nearly finished fermenting.

“The first pick was like 9% potential alcohol. That’s why we added the second picking, which had higher sugar levels,” he says.

As we taste the juice, Szilárd comments on the strange vintage – explaining that he’s normally finished picking in four days but this year the harvest will continue for four weeks. His wife Veronika and a small team of pickers were out bringing in the last of the Grüner (at 11% potential alcohol) when I arrived.

Harvesting the Grüner Veltliner. Photo: Chris Boiling

The first picking of Grüner, hand-harvested at 9% potential alcohol, was frothing nicely as I checked the temperature (18°C).

Looking for reassurance that I’m not completely crazy in trying to blend these two varieties, I ask Szilárd why he doesn’t do it and only makes varietal wines.

“Blends are always cheap,” he replies. “In this place you cannot produce anything cheap because all the production prices are triple the big ones, so I have to show very different products than the others and that’s how we could win little segments of the market.”

Established in 2011, Nádas Borműhely produces 10,000-12,000 bottles of wine a year from vineyards around the village of Etyek. His PDO wine will be a blanc de blanc, from Chardonnay, aged for at least 24 months.

After tasting the Királyleányka and Pinot Gris must, Szilárd pours me some Zenit, one of the other experimental varieties introduced to the area in the 1980s. Szilárd plans to make a sparkling wine from it this year and offers me some for my base wine. I consider it for a moment.

The early-ripening Zenit – a 1950s crossing of Ezerjó with Bouvier – performs outstandingly well in Etyek and was one of the few success stories in the disastrous 2014 vintage. Although a Grüner, Pearl of Victoria and Zenit blend would be equally unique, I’m wedded to the vision of a Grüner-Viktória Gyöngye blend. I have this gut feeling it’s what the world is waiting for. We’ll see in 24 months or so…

‘I have this gut feeling it’s what the world is waiting for’

The word ‘unique’ is often overused and wrongly appropriated. But I think it’s accurate for my first sparkling wine.

As I leave Etyek for my next stop, I drive past the Viktória Gyöngye vineyard and notice, on the other side of the road, the huge film studio which has caused some people to nickname the town ‘Etyekwood’. I smile to myself: my grapes came from the same hill. It’s all the convincing I need that my blend is going to be a blockbuster. And frankly my dear, if the world is not waiting for it, I don’t give a damn. I’m already having fun making it and learning from Szilárd.

The large film studio near the Pearl of Victoria vineyard suggests another blockbuster is on the horizon. Photo: Chris Boiling

Full story on Canopy.