Scarlet Tines - Budapest, Hungary

Dry Tokaji Wines - presentation at Nyitott Műhely

Mon, 1 Dec 2008 10:14:12 +0100

The next “BORCSÜTÖRTÖK” (Wine Thursday) series event at Nyitott Műhely is on December 11th, when Alkonyi László will give a talk on dry tokaj wines. Alkonyi László is editor in chief of Borbarát (‘wine friend’) magazine and a tokaj vintner.

The list of wines for tasting has yet to be announced.

Date: Thursday December 11, 2008
Time: 7.30pm
Location: 1123 Budapest XII. kerület Ráth György utca 4 (close to Déli pu.)
Admission: 6000,- HUF

Please note that there are a limited amount of places available, so you should e-mail the event organiser, András Lőke, on: a.loke@hvg.hu

Further details here (in Hungarian).
Photo © Josh Tse 2007

Bortársaság (Lánchíd) nyitási kedvezmény - Wine Society Shop Sale

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 11:41:44 +0100

Just to remind everyone, bortársaság has opened a new wine shop in Budapest near the chain bridge (lánchíd). The important information, however, is that they have a selection of 12 decent wines with 30% off till Wednesday 3rd. You can find more info about them here.

I’ve recently tasted the Heimann Zoltán’s flagship cuvée ‘Barbár’ which is very good though could do with a year or two on the horizontal. It is a curious red in that they have blended in a Basque varietal called tannat. The Konyári Loliense is a big-bodied white which has enough astringency to go well with more robust foods. The Oremus Late Harvest 2005 is probably the deal of the century with it comes to Tokaj, in my opinion (as seen for €36 in Ire, yikes). As for the Szemes Portugieser, it is light, simple fruity, suitable for immediate drinking.

Újbor és sajt fesztivál - New Wine & Cheese Festival 2008

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:59:51 +0100

Thursday 20th November will mark Beaujolais day in France. Hungary is following hot on its heels, with the újbor (new, Beaujolais-style wine) festival the following weekend in the city park. This will mark the fifth event of its kind. Many of the wines share the same wine-making techniques as those employed in Beaujolais, namely stainless steel tank fermentation, carbonic maceration and being no more than seven or eight weeks in bottle. What makes them unique are the native varietals, as opposed to the gamay noir etc., grown in the Beaujolais villages and surrounding areas.
While there is no sign of a list of exhibitors yet, these were the participants last year, so I guess we can expect a similar crowd. If nothing else, it will give a basic indication of how this year’s vintage is shaping up. Moreover, there is always the chance of a serendipitous discovery of a little-known Hungarian cheese!
To download the program, click here.

Date: November 29 - 30 2008
Time: 10am - 6pm
Location: Vajdahunyadvár - Castle in Városliget
Admission: 1,500-Ft/day (includes tasting glass)

St. Andrea Pinot Noir 2006 ‘csakegyszóval’

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:18:10 +0100

Lőrincz György was popular among wine drinkers well before he was awarded 2008 wine maker of the year (borászok borásza), by the vintners at the Etyek Pincefesztivál. He is the man behind the successful boutique Egri winery, St. Andrea.
In the glass, pale orange-red in colour, quite translucent. The fruit comes from two fields: the Padok field in Verpelét (rustic, sharp character) and the Kétágú field in Andornaktály (more direct PN character). Fermented in steel tanks for c. 27 days and aged in toasted oak barrels for 9 months. First impressions: On the nose fermented red berries (plum, strawberry), earthy (forest-floor), some mushroom and spice; a typical vinous expression of pinot. Perhaps a little too much vaporising alcohol (13.3%). On the palate strawberry, hint of tarragon, smokey cocoa flavours. Very smooth, light-bodied wine with bracing but refined tannins which behave to a point; then like a spoiled pony, take an occasional nip—a bit acerbic/edgy overall. As for the acids, there are plenty of those (“elegance”)—this makes the wine quite fresh and young, however this is not entirely my preference. After a while I began to notice some secondary bouquet of cloves, vanilla, rustic tones; however the alcohol had not disappeared as expected. I found a slight bitterness/sourness in the decay, which wasn’t as bad as it sounds.
For me, this is a fashionable burgundy-style wine. Elegance is all the rage these days (it is just not my cup of... tea). Also, I found the alcohol too high overall, however it had wonderful ripe flavours so this is perhaps the trade-off. Well maybe not a quaffable wine. A vibrating, lively, concentrated wine would be a better summary. It needs food like dark fowl (duck, goose etc.) and lighter game. Pinot noir is back in fashion big time and a dull bottle can be no more than light grape juice to me. At least this bottle has something to say. Just not entirely sure I want to hear it. Your milage may vary. As for the title, csak/egy/szóval (‘with one word’), this is probably toungue-in-cheek: some of the titles at St. Andrea were getting quite long and descriptive before 2006 (‘Őrzöm csodálatos álmodat’ comes to mind).

Tasting Date: 12 November 2008
Type: Red, Dry, Minőségi / Certified Quality
Price: 2940 Ft / €10.85 from Bortársaság
Appellation: Eger
My rating: 11/20

Variations on a theme of ‘Swedish Pizza’

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:10:05 +0100

Five random things about student life: beer, lectures, sex, partying, sleep deprivation. Gross generalisation of course. Food can easily take a back seat in all these time constraints and parties. Still there is a basic requirement of sustenance. Junk (‘fast’) food usually means spending twice as long in the gym to avoid hypertension, diabetes and becoming overweight, which kind of kills the whole time-saving thing in the first place. Talking about fat—it makes food tasty, that’s a given. So where does a (student) staple such as pizza fit in? It can be tasty, versatile, fast but also it is mostly pre-processed, lacklustre and high in carbohydrates and saturated fats. In this information age the mission to lower our saturated fat and salt intake, ergo cholesterol levels, has become a necessity (the results of which you’ll begin to notice in your forties). Not easy with golden arches peeking around every corner of the city.
With regard to the above, I recommend the following. All you need is a stock of large round Swedish crisp bread, knäckebröd (IKEA Food sometimes has it, about the size of a pizza base) or rectanglar Finnish bread, and some natural yoghurt. After that, it’s all about what you find in the fridge and larder of your flat. Crisp bread keeps fresh for a very long time hence a good idea to have some at home; natural yoghurt keeps for about 3 weeks in the fridge. Another recommendation: next time you are in Spar, go to the freezer and pick up a box of frozen fresh basil (or other herbs). Basil is a great way to add some zing to all sorts of dishes and salads—never mind the ‘living’ plant, all you need to do is look at it and it dies.
Scenario: Friday evening, tired, hungry and limited amount of time to get to the party. The Pörkölt you meant to make during the week didn’t transpire into reality, which is just as well as there is nothing worse than feeling like a bloated and inebriated elephant on the dance floor. Then you remembered the knäckebröd!
Preparation time: 7 minutes
Cooking time: 7 minutes
Serves: 1
Freezing: before oven yes, immediately
Cost: c. 300,-Ft

Ingredients
1 pizza-sized crisp bread, or several rectangular ones
natural yoghurt, 1.5% fat
1 tomato, sliced
some lean ham/turkey breast, diced
1 small onion, sliced
100g low-fat (félzsíros) Trappista/Óvári cheese, grated
seasoning & olive oil

Preparation
All you need is a pre-heated grill for this, although a hot oven (220℃) will do just as well. Layer some natural yoghurt on the crisp bread as a pizza base. Chop and add toppings, putting the onions on last. Season with salt, freshly-ground black pepper and some of that frozen basil if you have it. Drizzle with a small amount of olive oil. Place under the grill for about 7 minutes, or until cheese is melted and golden brown. Serve on a large plate with a glass of inexpensive, fruity red wine like this, or this; or in the Swedish spirit, ice-cold milk.

Notes
The variations are endless, hence the versatility of whatever you can find around your kitchen. If you like crispy-base pizza, you’ll love this. Some of it will have softened from the yoghurt. Skip the Budapestbakelse (Budapest pastry) afterwards but keeping with the Svenska tema have a coffee instead.

The light-but-looney Scarlet Tines version: Swedish crisp bread topped with: natural yoghurt (1.5%) and zsírszegény túró (Hungarian cottage cheese) mixture as the base. Cherry tomatoes on the vine, chopped turkey breast or smoked Speck ham, sliced onions, félzsírós Óvári cheese, drizzled with olive oil and good soy sauce. One half basil, other peanut-sauce from Wasabi restaurant (comes with the menu salads). Seasoning.

The two-hour gym version: Swedish crisp bread topped with: tejföl (10% fat) base. Cherry tomatoes, pitted black olives, smoked Hungarian Gyulai kolbász or salami, Óvári and Pannonia cheeses, green onions, garlic, sliced hot/californian paprika. Seasoning.

3000 years — the quest for utopian chocolate

Thu, 6 Nov 2008 16:00:43 +0100

Three millennia should be enough time to gather all the csokoládé making know-how humanity will ever need. Or at least that is not an entirely unreasonable assumption. The first documented use of cocoa in its patriae Mexico and Central America is around 1100 BC, however, no European ever heard of the exotic bitter drink until the 16th century (courtesy of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs). Today, roughly 67% of cocoa production emanates from Western Africa.
Making chocolate as we know it is an expensive, involved process. After harvesting the ripe pods from the cocoa plant, the beans are separated out for fermentation. These can then be sun dried for 5- 7 days and transferred to the chocolate makers’ manufacturing facility where they are cleaned, roasted and graded. Finally the nibs are ground to produce a chocolate liquor (mass). This is blended with cocoa butter in various quantities to make dark, milk and white chocolate couvertures. The resulting product is then conched and tempered, usually by the individual chocolatiers.
Compared to Seville in 1585, we can say that Europe is awash with chocolate in all its forms, except some forms are more prevalent than others. From mundane Mars to luscious Lindt, your corner shop is bound to stock it (however 25℃ doesn’t do it any favours). Despite this, getting a glimpse into Plato’s mirror-world of chocolate often takes an effort akin to aligning a few planets while having a bad hair day and no breakfast. Which is exactly why this new Hungarian chocolatier deserves a mention.
Csiszár Katalin is a solo csokoládékészitő from Rózsavölgy, in district 22. In search of quality chocolate she liked, she decided it was easier to make it herself. Learning her trade also involved time in France, Italy and elsewhere—she has now returned home to show off her talent. She buys the cocoa beans solely from the Dominican Republic which are typified by strong fruity, spicy aromas. In trying to stay as close to the true flavour, no vanilla or lecithin are added to her tablet chocolate. Fresh cream is used to extract the exotic flavours added to her bonbons, such as green cardamom, lavender, star anise and tarragon. Hungarian produce is used wherever possible, especially the honeys, lavender from the Pannonhalmi abbots, pálinkas, fruits and of course, real cream. As no preservatives are added, she recommends consuming with two weeks of purchase.
As with wine, I believe chocolate needs a good balance of scientific knowledge and creative artistry to bring out its true potential. I love when wineries design new labels for their bottles, using, for example, local artists’ interpretation of the wine. Csiszár Katalin must have had similar aspirations as the boxed chocolates are just delightfully illustrated—it really is a box you would want to keep. Mother nature commands a high price in many ways to extract an almost utopian esszencia from her fruits, so handmade chocolates of this calibre aren’t cheap. So I think there are some reasons after 3,000 years why chocolate of this sublime quality is so hard to find: cost and labour. The parallels with (red) wine become a lot more obvious to me now, not only as another comestible with cardioprotective properties. How does it taste? The best chocolate I have ever tasted in my life!! Seriously.
Csiszár Katalin has a shop front in district 5, Királyi Pál u. 6. You can find her website at www.rozsavolgyi.com.

Bitch Moan and Wine Tasting: The Wines of the Baron von Twickel Vineyard

Wed, 5 Nov 2008 21:35:46 +0100

If you’ve been living here a while fulfilling the function of an ‘expat’, you may be familiar with the venerable little bookstore called Treehugger Dan’s, which has recently branched out from its original location in VI Csengery utca. In addition selling books and fair-trade coffee, promoting organic foods and volunteering space for human rights work, the guys there have now turned their hand to public wine tasting events.

Their third such event is scheduled for the 13th of November and the presentation will be given by Mr. Nayan Gowda, the Head Wine Maker of von Twickel Vineyard. The wines up for tasting and discussion are the following:
 2007 Chateau Kajmád Rosé 2005 Liszt Bikavér 2003 Chateau Kajmád Cuvée 2005 Chateau Kajmád Kadarka 2006 Chateau Kajmád Merlot 2006 Chateau Kajmád Cabernet Sauvignon  Food samples during the tasting will be provided courtesy of "Kitchen from Mars" (Mars Beli Bolt), a newly-opened shop in Fény utcai Piac behind Mammut shopping centre.

Date: Thursday November 13, 2008
Time: 7pm
Location: 1065 Lázár u. 16; Tel: 269-3843
Admission: 3500,-HUF, members 3000,-HUF
  Notes from the calendar: “If you make an order that evening only of half a case from our wine list (you can mix and match), receive a 1500 forint discount from your order, a case or more, a 2500 forint discount. PLACES ARE LIMITED - YOU MUST PRE-REGISTER TO ATTEND. Please email wine@bitchmoanwine.com to register. If for any reason you need to cancel, please let us know in advance.”

Frittmann János Wine Talk at Nyitott Műhely

Wed, 5 Nov 2008 09:09:36 +0100

The next “BORCSÜTÖRTÖK” (Wine Thursday) series event at Nyitott Műhely is on November 13th, when János Frittmann will give a presentation about what can be ‘brought out of Kunsági wines’.
Frittmann wines from the Kunság district of Hungary are made as a family business. Currently, the family owns 40 hectares of self-planted cordon-grown vines. Fruit from another 70 hectares owned by smallholders are bought in under contract. The winery produces both red and white wine from about nine different varietals including Ezerjó and Kadarka.

The tasting will comprise the following wines:

Ezerjó 2007
Cserszegi Fűszeres 2007
Irsai Olivér 2008
Ezerjó fahordós 2006
Kékfrankos Rosé
Kadarka 2007
Merlot Selection 2006
Cabernet Sauvignon - Franc 2006
Ezerjó Késői Szüret 2006

Date: Thursday November 13, 2008
Time: 7.30pm
Location: 1123 Budapest XII. kerület Ráth György utca 4 (close to Déli pu.)
Admission: 6000,- HUF

Please note that there are a limited amount of places available, so you should e-mail the event organiser, András Lőke, on: a.loke@hvg.hu

Further details here (in Hungarian) and at the wine maker’s website: www.frittmann.hu .

The little question of Oryza sativa...

Tue, 7 Oct 2008 23:14:57 +0200

If you ever managed to make a complete mess of the rice to go with your evening meal, you are not the first. Rice counts for ⅕ of the calories consumed worldwide by humans, yet despite its pervasive nature, not everyone knows how to cook it well. To grow rice is a labour-intensive exercise and takes a lot of water—I’m afraid this is paralleled in the kitchen. Having done a little experimenting, I can say there a few things which may make the outcome more positive:

Select good quality white long-grain rice† wherever possible. Avoid the ‘Fast Cook/Boil-in-the-bag’ variety and cook as follows (the absorption method):
Rinse the required amount a few times in cold water, then steep for 30 minutes in same
Drain the rice and add the correct amount of water: for every 1g rice, add 1.33ml water: so if you want to cook 200g (dry weight) rice, now add 266ml of cold water. Add a pinch of salt or flavouring‡.
Use a pot with a tightly fitting lid (if you don’t have one, use aluminum foil under the lid to seal it)
Bring the rice to the boil, put the lid on, and simmer on very low heat for 10 minutes.
Without lifting the lid, turn off the heat and let sit for a further 5 minutes.
Fluff-up with a fork and serve as you wish.

Notes

Depending on the age/starch-content of the rice, you may have to add +/- 10% water: trial-and-error here! Bear in mind that, although brown rice takes longer to cook, it is far more nutritionally beneficial.
‡ Once you have found a rice and technique that works, you can try adding different flavours to the rice. Add chicken stock instead of/in addition to water (or pop half a stock cube in at the beginning of cooking); add a half-teaspoon of turmeric to 200g rice (be careful, it stains clothes); add some chopped fresh thyme; add some saffron strands that have steeped in 30ml water (add both); fry boiled rice in a little oil, spices and chopped scallions.
† It seems to me that the major supermarkets are not the best places to seek out good slow-cook rice, though this may change. I have found a great selection at smaller food shops such as Szép Kis India Bolt and Culinaris, including more fragrant Jasmin and Basmati varieties.

UPDATE: Bárány István Maria Trofinova Wine Talk at Nyitott Műhely

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:32:26 +0200

One of my favourite places to listen to jazz is in a place called Nyitott Műhely (The Open Workshop). They have a variety of non-musical activities running throughout the year also, among them the “BORCSÜTÖRTÖK” (Wine Thursday) series.
The next such event is on October 9th, when MARIA TROFINOVA (Phil., (CEU) and Wine Critic) will give a talk, in English, on ‘the best Chardonnays, both here and abroad’.

"My talk will bring Chardonnay wines into focus. I'll try to show what difference a regional approach and terroir can make and will pay particular attention to the presence/absence of oak in the process of wine-making. There are fanatic believers in the evil side of oak as well as people who just adore the vanilla-creamy taste it gives to Chards. Without any intention to have a final word and gulp in this debate I will deliberate on how much oak is permissible and whether any satisfaction without oak is possible. I hope that by means of both talking and tasting we?ll discover a wide and exciting spectrum of what can be produced from Chardonnay grapes." Maria Trofinova.

The lecture will also double up as a tasting, comprising the following wines:
- Légli Landlord 2006
- Budai Chardonnay 2007 Nyakas Pince
- St. Andrea Kovászó Chardonnay 2006
- Penfolds Koonunga Hill Chardonnay 2006 (Australia)
- Montes Chardonnay Reserva 2007 (Chile)
- William Fevre Chablis Premier Cru Montmains 2006 (France)
- Tormaresca Chardonnay 2007 (Italy)

Date: Thursday October 9, 2008
Time: 7.30pm
Location: 1123 Budapest XII. kerület Ráth György utca 4 (close to Déli pu.)
Admission: 6000,- HUF

Please note that there are a limited amount of places available, so you should e-mail the event organiser, András Lőke, on: a.loke@hvg.hu

Further details here (in Hungarian). UPDATED: 7/10/2008.