I spent today’s day in Budapest tasting the top wines of the 2011 Pannon Bormustra. You might remember my critical review of this competition last year that, translated into Hungarian, caused a veritable stir on the local wine scene. This year, the competition was completely redesigned, and so it was interesting to see how this affected the results.
Hungarian wine writers discussing the merits of a Cabernet Franc we tasted.
Among the many changes at Pannon Bormustra there is a totally new, smaller jury composed of international authorities such as Matt Kramer, Andreas Larsson and Caroline Gilby (the latter having had the most substantial exposure to Hungarian wines previously). The methodology has also been modified, and now the top 20 wines in each category – white, red and sweet – are selected through a panel discussion. This is a major change: selecting a competition winner through score average will always be more erratic than if people actually discuss the merits of a wine in the glass. The jury was also allowed the liberty of being very critical and so it actually reduced the number of awards from 60 to 48. Notably, in the newly established ‘Best Value’ category (for wines that retails under 2000 forints, or 7€) no red wine was awarded at all.
It’s with a bunch of Hungarian wine writers that I met today to look at the 48 happy bottles. Interestingly a test bottle for every wine was purchased on the high street to double check if the quality was consistent. (This is meant to counteract so-called journalist cuvées, or special batches of wines that are doctored to score higher in a competition tasting). Luckily no case of doctoring was detected (though bottle variation can be a big problem for some wines). The dry whites line-up was certainly the best I remember from the Bormustra (where I’ve been on the jury from 2004 until 2010): many wines with plenty of character, and few anonymous commercial international styles. Actually many whites were erring on the rustic, oxidative edge but for me, this represents the real local Hungarian style and I’m happy to have it in the glass, in proportion.
Red wines were a mixed bunch. There was still a lot of what I call the Hungarian disease (click this link to read my in-depth article about that). The last of the line-up was a 16% alcohol Bordeaux blend that positively tasted like Italian amarone, with an overripe raisiny pruney character and zero drinkability. At least five or six more were in that obsolete blockbuster competition style with masses of oak, ripeness and extraction. But there were also three Pinot Noirs that were vibrant, transparent, refreshing and classically proportioned. They gave me hope for next year.
Sweetest wine of the tasting (>230g residual sugar). The ‘B’ bottle is the control sample purchased on the market.
It all paled in front of the impressive line-up of sweet Tokaj wines, a much more comprehensive representation than ever at Pannon Bormustra through the marketing effort of competition manager Richard Nemes. Between 6 puttonyos aszús from 2003, 2006 and 2007 we were really spoilt for choice. Some of these Tokajis followed the route of natural balance and food friendliness while others took no prisoners on their way to extreme concentration and sugary power (the last sample had more than 230g of sugar). The wines I liked best were the #42, 44, 47 and 48 but that won’t give you a precise hint: the competition results are embargoed until Friday next week when I’ll blog on the Pannon Bormustra again to discuss the winners.
Disclosure
My day trip to Budapest and wine tasting was sponsored by the Pannon Bormustra organisers: Sziget company on behalf of the Pannon Wine Guild.
Still not seen the actual results myself and will be really curious to see the winners and how some of my own preferences differed from the consensus too. Was also concerned about bottle variation when we judged. I mentioned this in my speech as i suspect not enough attention to detail with things like dissolved oxygen at bottling and closures . Agree with you about dry whites and some very promising Pinot Noirs. Sweet Tokaji was a superb line up too.
There appear to have been many technically imperfect wines: oxygen at bottling is one thing, IMO too many reduced wines whereas others had hints of oxidation (particularly overripe reds). But it’s always been a part of the Bormustra: in some years nearly half of the dry whites deserved rejections (this is when I tasted 50% of the all the submitted samples, not the 48 best wines like this year).
Regarding the sweet Tokaj line-up it’s been better than ever this year and Richard Nemes deserves the credit for drawing so many top names into the competition… Although the likes of Kiralyudvar did participate in the past it was the exception rather than the norm.
I felt rather awkward tasting the reds. A week ago the criticism of the jury after the Bormustra left me dumbfounded, I thought Hungarian reds don’t deserve such bad rap. The pinots were OK, the 2 kékfrankos dreary (one tasted like carmenere, the other smelt of old barrels). Out of the 3 Bull’s Blood 2 were quite to my liking though far from faultless. The cabernet-based wines were not my cup of tea at all (many herbal notes, sometimes mixed with cloying sweetness on midpalate). However there was one pure CF (might have been the top Sauska) which was really well-made and even though it was big and lusciuos it retained a remarkable freshness thanks to its fine acidity. And then the lineup ended with a 16.2 alc. monster in the late harvest, raisiny & pruney mode favoured by some Villány winemakers.
The whites were better but still not good enough. Incredible bottle variation. I find the Tokaj Furmints a bit overwhelming, heavy and often devoid of fruit. The 3 Somló wines were really funky on the nose but had a much friendlier balance on the palate than the Tokaj bunch. The only Juhfark was the most saline wine I have ever tasted and also one of the most intriguing. And then there was a lovely Pinot Gris bordering on the off-dry that was perhaps the one with the best balance in the line-up.
Sadly I had to leave just when the sweets came in but the 2 wines I managed to taste (a late harvest and the Aszú that was voted the best wine of the Bormustra) were worlds apart from the dry whites and reds. Pure, precise, fruity, flowery and incredibly long.
Inasmuch as a wine competition can reflect what is going on in a large winemaking country like Hungary, I think the 2011 Pannon Bormustra is giving a good snapshot of the Hungarian production. I share what you say about white and reds: the latter too heterogeneous with too many excessive wines but some really good bottles; the whites still on their way up but already representing a decently good level. A lot is still to be done but there is improvement if you think of three or five years ago.
I believe that double checking with control bottles from the real market is a good idea. Bot not exactly for the same reason as I hear from many places. Assuming that wine producers send purposely doctored or special batches of wines to get better result and so support their knowingly lower quality wines for the consumers is not exactly the kindest thought. Even if I myself do not say that such a cheat has never happened.
In my opinion wine competitions should serve the consumers.
Consumers buy wines from the market, so I expect the judges of the wine competitions to do the same. Wines on the shelves are against of heavy load of the trading process. The far from perfect temperature and light conditions, the shaking way from the cellar to the dealer’s depot and then to the shops.
Clearly, wines from the market suffer and face way more challenges than wines resting in perfect conditions in the cellar of the producer. Some wines can stand the torture of the wine trading process some can not.
It could happen that judges give stellar scores to a wine but the same wine tires out during the trade logistics. You never know. So I say that the reason behind the bottle variations is not necessary cheating.
That is why I am very happy that the new format of the Pannon Bormustra at least introduced the control bottle re-tasting.
In fact I have rather radical opinion about wine critics accepting wines straight from the producers. I seriously wonder how they do not see (or they see, but prefer to be silent about it) this problem: consumers buy from the shelves when they taste and write about wines from the cellars. If a producer want a critic to taste and write about his/her wines, I think it is better and more correct to send money to the critic and ask him/her to purchase the wines from the market.
Getting professional feedback or using the service of effective opinion-shapers is good. These are occasionally good things to find places for improvements. Also customers want to know what to buy, they have the right to know what they can expect for their money.
So in short
let’s taste and judge the same wine as the consumer buys. That is the point of the whole game.
Zoltán, thanks for your thorough comment. I agree with the control bottles bit, although I’d like to nuance it. On one hand many consumers are buying directly from the producers. In some countries such as Germany, Austria and France direct sales make up a very large part of the market. So here your point about transport and storage conditions is weakened. Of course the Pannon Bormustra awards blind tasting is a small control sample, but out of the ~35 bottles we tasted I didn’t really notice a major qualitative change between the producer-supplied sample and the shop-purchased one. There was a bit of bottle variation but I couldn’t say the bottles from the shops generally showed any storage issues.
As to your second point, it’s good to be idealistic. In a perfect world wine writers would be financed by their readers and would be able to pay for the bottles they taste. Unfortunately this is less and less likely to happen. I say this as someone who spends a major part of disposable income on wine, but readers increasingly expect journalist content to be delivered for free. Wine magazines are struggling economically throughout the world (and isolated are those that derive any major income from copy sales; it’s mostly publicity that pays the bills). Internet content is expected to be free. Even the few writers with universal reputation who have decided to charge for their writing on the www are not making a lot of money on this.
So I’d reverse the question: are readers really ready to acknowledge that delivering impartial competent reviews has to cost serious money? Otherwise the current situation will continue. And why is wine writing expected to respond to standards higher than many other fields? Nobody cares whether a movie critic actually paid for the cinema ticket before reviewing a new release. And nobody makes a big fuss about reviewers receiving cars or laptops for testing. Testing is done with seriousness and competence, then the product is returned and nobody objects the impartiality of the review. I think wine writers should disclose where the wines they talk about come from (like I do in this blog) and it’s better to find a balance between what you buy and whta you get for free, but let’s not get paranoiac about it especially when content is universally expected to be given away for free.
About the direct sales you are very right. As far as I know it is important part of many Hungarian producers as well. Specially the smaller ones. The reason is clearly that the bottles are stored in perfect conditions and not suffered from the logistics at all.
I am not surprised that you did not find significant bottle variations. Producers knew about the tasting method of the Bormustra and I am sure that the illustrious list of judges and the strict but fair judging method ensured that producers entered mostly good wines. Also the competition fee was a pre-filter. Entering two wines to the competitions was about 150 euros.
About the second point. I do not expect the wine writers to be financed by their readers. It is OK that producers finance them. Giving free wines to wine writers, paying for competition fees are ways of marketing. That is correct, as long the consumer knows about it.
I have no problem if the competition organizers openly admit that they judge wines sent by the producers and not from the market shelves and the wine writers tell honestly to their readers, that they write about free wines provided by the producers.
So I do not expect the present system to change, but I expect the wine competitions, wine writers and the producers to be more open and honest. From that point your work is highly respectable and so the Bormustra was an important step forward and it has set an excellent example for other wine competition.
Dear Ms. Gilby, Mr. Bonkowski, Mr. Jonas,
could you possibly elaborate a bit more on bottle variation at Pannon Bormustra? How did it compare to other top competitions of the world?
Andras, I can only speak for the press tasting of the 48 awarded wines that I described on my blog. In several cases the control bottle bought from shops did differ minimally from the producer sample: in one case the wine was a bit more reduced, another bottle had less vivid fruit, the perception of residual sugar in one of the <2000ft white wines was higher in the producer bottle (the control bottle tasted a little drier). These were minor differences that didn'y really affect the overall wine quality: a normal phenomenon that happens with every wine (especially after some time in the bottle).
I can't possibly compare this to other competitions as I have never tasted a control bottle in such circumstances. (But I don't participate in many competitions). Where I have recently been in the jury e.g. VinIstra in Croatia or the Riesling competition in Germany you only taste a second bottle when the first is faulty. But even if control bottles were opened at other competitions, I'd expect the bottle variation to be exactly the same, since what emerged at the Bormustra press tasting was consistent with any other tasting e.g. at a wine magazine.
Yes, thank you for your promt answer. The wine magazine reference is a perfect answer to my query.