The Fruits of Our Labors

At the risk of sounding a bit smug, vindication can be a nice feeling. For those of you “in the business” you know that you’ve got to kiss a few frogs (bad wines) before you you find your prince(sses) (good wines). Now not that DECANTER magazine is the be and end all of wine criticism, but we all know it ain’t too shabby either, so when I saw that they had given their “Pinot Noir Trophy over L10″ within the Central and Eastern Europe category to the Vylyan Pinot Noir 2004 from the Villany region, I was happy to know that we already had, and were selling this nifty little Pinot from the shelves here at Wine Library.

“Pinot from Hungary?!” you say…yes, indeed! Along with Pinot Noir, Hungary has a long tradition of successfully cultivating Burgundian varieties (like Szurkebarat , for example, which is the Hungarian name for Pinot Gris) which were brought to Hungary from France by Cistercian monks over 1000 years ago. This lengthy stay in Pannonia has allowed these varieties to comfortably adapt to the local soils and climates and yield wines quite distinct from their progenitors in Burgundy. This is Pinot in a different “mode” - not Burgundy, not Oregon, but something else again. Well worth a try if you delight in Pinot’s promiscuous permutations.