Out of this 25000, Tonković himself owns no more than 10 hectares, though, currently they only harvest on 7. What is more, they harvest Kadarka alongside with a number of “Kadarka clones”. The soil there is known to be rich in loess, which plays a key role in producing wines with a distinctively fruity feature. Furthermore, it is safe to say that the grapes are “not suffering” in this region, seeing that beneath the loess, there is a layer, capable of preserving water remarkably well.
As for the Kadarka, it is worth noting that its origin is far from being known; some believe it can be rooted from Anatolia, while others argue that it could be originated from Albania. However, what is certain is that it was named after the Albanian city of “Skadar”. The Kadarka is fairly undemanding, tough and can easily cope with drought. Moreover, it yields its fruit reasonably late. Due to the fact that it rots quite easily and it is highly sensitive to frost, it is not rare that wine-makers start harvesting it in September. In most of the cases, it yields an abundant crop, however, its productivity is highly dependent on the fertility of the land.
It is interesting why one would build a (family) winery on one type of grape alone, but the owner gives a concise, straight answer to this question: “The Kadarka is an above complex type of grape and for this reason, we can make a variety of wines out of it. White, red, rose, stiller but even dessert wines can be produced using Kadarka. In the not too distant future, we plan to produce champagne too, out of Kadarka, goes without saying. By so doing, we could provide our visitors with 6 different products from a selection of distinct vintages. Thus, we could cover a wide variety of wines, so in terms of sales, we could present our buyers with a range of products to choose from.”
The Tonković winery directly influences its wine-style by using barrels made of Hungarian oak. They do not have faith in heavily-roasted staves, since they know that fragility, softness and elegance are the Kadarka’s real, natural qualities, but a barrel of the previously mentioned kind can make it all be crude and bitty, not mentioning the fact that if one “overdoes it”, it might lose its distinctive fruity and spicy features that are otherwise rather typical of the Kadarka.
