The Hungarian Great Plain, the ’Alföld’, is not necessarily where you’d expect there to be a hotbed of innovation. Wine connoisseurs and better-informed consumers generally look down their nose at the Hajós-Bajai wine region, known more for its vast horizons, sandy soil and generally rather basic wines. Flat and therefore easy to mechanise, this region was able to churn out huge quantities of cheap and cheerful plonk under Socialism and this is still largely true today. However, there are producers, such as Csaba Koch, the president of the local Wine Community, who are seeking to drag the wine region out of the doldrums it inhabits and change the perception of ’oh no! Alföldi wine’. In 2014, he was even awarded Winery of the Year in recognition of his work.
Csaba Koch has been cultivating vines and producing wine for the last 25 years. Initially given a few rows of vines to tend by his father in 1990, over a period of years, he managed to double his production and the amount of land he had under vine each year. He checked out where vines had been abandoned, sought out the owner and purchased them. Interestingly Riesling was not a particularly popular variety at that time, so was often left to go wild and he was able to snap it up. He now has a total of 140 hectares (including 10 in Villány), produces 900,000 bottles annually and employs 70 people. He produces a large range of wines from sound entry-level wines, right up to premium category wines. Not bad for someone who had previously had an innate dislike of vines thanks to being forced to get up early every Saturday and help his dad in the vineyards.
He won his first gold with his ’Pozsonyi Fehér’ in the early nineties and has never looked back, continuing to win prizes both in Hungary and internationally. He had lots of different wines, he said, as he had plenty of small barrels in the cellar. He then tried to open a small pub and bought a tractor followed by a little van. He admits that the first ten years were difficult and he grew out of his small cellar quite quickly, so moved here, which was a ruin at the time. He built onto the winery as and when; however, he did this all from his own capital without third-party investment. Although in the past he also sold wine in PET ex cellar, he now only produces and sells quality wines in one-use bottles, no longer using ’deposit’ bottles, still common in Hungary at the low end of the market. His long years of work have resulted in a good presence in the large supermarket chains in Hungary as well as exports to France, Germany and Poland. Indeed he delivers Kékfrankos and Cabernet Sauvignon to France, Brazil and South Korea. In addition, he sells a lot of aromatic wines to Austria, also as cleaned must. Irsai Oliver and Cserszegi Fűszeres do well here in the Alföld and he can sell as much Cserszegi Fűszeres as he can produce. He is now trying to break into the UK market too.
He has big plans too. He wishes to cultivate apples here from next year and produce freshly pressed juice. Nevertheless, he is no longer seeking to expand – they already produce 26 different types of wine - but to up category by improving quality and innovating. The world is not standing still and Csaba recognises the importance of not only good hygiene and high quality grapes, but also innovation and research in order not to be left behind. He strives for harmony in the vineyards and the winery, hasn’t used insecticides for years and only uses environmentally-friendly fungicides approved by the Agricultural Management Programme.
Csaba believes that chemical-free wines are the future and collaborates with the University of Pécs Vine and Wine Institute in domestic trials of resistant varieties, with the aim of producing disease-resistant, high-yielding varieties that can be cultivated without chemicals. The goal of the programme is sustained resistance to downy and powdery mildew and grey rot. The new clones are achieved by conventional cross-breeding, but with the dawning of a new era, genetic engineering is also being used to incorporate resistance from wild varieties. Dr Pál Kozma, Head of the Grape Breeding and Gene Conservation Department, points out that viticulture is very polluting; it represents only 2% of agriculture yet uses 50% of the total pesticides. The EU ECOPHYTO plan provides that the number of pesticides used should be reduced by 50% by 2018 in the interest of not only a healthy environment but also cost savings. Given that there are between six and eight back crossings using best-quality varieties, the results can be considered candidates for fully-fledged vitis vinifera varieties as the genome only contains 1-2% foreign genes and only those parts relating to resistance. Moreover, they are able to achieve quality at levels similar to traditional varieties.
He has now begun to convert 30 hectares of resistant varieties to chemical-free cultivation. He produces two resistant varieties here, Bácska and Pannonia, along with a further twenty experimental varieties. He is the institute’s largest partner with the greatest growing area for experimental grapes. He also plans to establish an organic winery in the short term and would then further increase the area of resistant varieties, which he sees as a long-term solution in viticulture. Incidentally, as another innovation, he also mentions the use of drones which can see how ’happy’ and ’unhappy’ vines photosynthesise differently, with ’unhappy’ vines producing 10% less than their ’happy’ companions.
Standing by the roadside on a cold, damp November day, Csaba points out the rows of experimental vines he has on the local, legendary, black, greasy ’Bácska’ soil; rich in nutrients, lime and humus, Csaba quips that cleverer people would probably have planted corn or wheat on such agricultural soils, whereas he has planted experimental vines.
Bácska was bred on this nutrient-rich soil where it gets the most sunshine in the whole country. It needs lots of nutrients and water. A high-yielding grape, it produces an acceptable quality wine similar in some ways to Müller-Thurgau and would be suitable for an IGT wine. Pannonia is a better quality, low-yielding, resistant variety, similar to Riesling, preserving acidity along with relatively high sugar levels, thus giving it the potential to make quality wine with a long life potential. As Csaba says, you shouldn’t necessarily seek to make cheap wine with the same variety as for premium expressions, so he chose to look for different varieties to meet the two needs. Csaba sought out Pál and the research institute after seeing that both varieties did well here and because some of his neighbours wanted to report him for having unapproved varieties, he adds jokingly.
The experimental grapes are microvinified with controlled fermentation and in some cases, utilise special wine-making technology. We tried some of the unfiltered new wines. Here are my impressions.
54/2 2016
Good potential to produce a sound table wine. Light wine with crisp acidity, lemon and apple with a touch of stone fruit, white pepper and honey, balanced with a hint of residual sugar. Fresh and quaffable.
Bácska 2016
Rather restrained on the nose but opens a bit after aeration. Apple, lemon, pear, a touch of honey and a floral note. A little flat and empty on mid-palate but slight sweetness on finish makes it more palatable.
Pannonia 2016
Perfumed, citrus fruit and white flowers on the nose. Medium-bodied with high, crisp acidity with plenty of lime, honey and a touch of almond bitterness on the medium finish. Fresh, elegant and very drinkable. Would probably benefit from oak maturation like Riesling. An attractive, quality wine.
Andorszőlő 2016
Still a little cloudy. Medium bodied, tightly structured with citrus and acidity dominating. Slightly medicinal with some lemon sherbet and lime, some Tramini notes and a bit of alcohol burn.
Jázmin 2016
An early-ripening variety, rich in aromas. Quite perfumed with floral and citrus notes. Some strange flavours such as fallen leaves and apple pips. Rather high acidity and some residual sugar on the finish. A little uninspiring.
29/3 – rosé from a red grape, made with white wine technology
Pale pink, ripe and fruity on nose. Strawberry jam, raspberry, rosehip and bubble gum on the nose along with some cherry on the palate. Fresh acidity. Quite quaffable.
29/3 – pale red wine reminiscent of siller made with ’separage’ technology (freshly pressed, frozen solids are added to fermenting must)
Aromas of raspberry, cherry, tobacco and some floral notes. Rich on the palate with light, fine-grained tannins and crisp acidity with flavours of cherry, spice and punch. Very attractive wine.
29/3 – pale red wine produced with ‘double pasta’ technology (removal of half the must – which is then used to produce siller – thus increasing the skin contact of the remaining must, making the wine darker, more characteristic and tannic)
Almost like siller. Pale ruby with plenty of cherry, raspberry, punch and a slight floral note Some fallen leaves on palate as well. Fresh acidity with slightly warming alcohol. Fresh, ripe fruit on finish. Fresh, but rather simple.
Photos by Piroska Koltai
