Photos: Daniel Ercsey
Sándor Zsolt has featured on WineSofa before. I wrote about him seven years ago, about his plans, what he was doing and why. Not much has changed since then, really. The family has grown, the children are getting bigger, the Bükk wine region’s first collective initiative was born and subsequently died, Zsolt took a job as an employed winemaker and then quit, and he is still bursting with plans. He has planted Furmint in Miskolc and wants to transform the whole of Avas, a multi-level network of wine cellars in the heart of the city. Meanwhile, quietly and without making a fuss, he continues to produce wonderful white and red wines after another from two seemingly impossible grape varieties: Cserszegi Fűszeres and Zweigelt.
The funny thing is that Sándor Zsolt is hardly known, not just nationally but even in his own backyard, in Miskolc. And yet, with every new vintage, he produces a handful of wines that have Michelin-starred chefs and top American and Japanese sommeliers beating a path to his door. Well, I suppose no man is a prophet in his own country...
I visit the winery at least once a year, and this year was no exception. I tasted everything that had already been bottled (and quite a few things that hadn’t), so you wouldn't have to. Actually, what am I talking about? That's complete nonsense! I tasted them precisely to whet your appetite and encourage you to follow my example. After all, is there anything better on Earth than drinking superb wines made by a friendly, smiling winemaker on those increasingly dark afternoons, while reading your favourite novel or editing videos with your laptop balanced on your knees?
Freya 2024 | 88 points
If the winery has a flagship wine, this isn't it. If the winery has a wine that consumers seek out more than any other, this is the one! This peculiar duality, this almost schizophrenic situation, has come about because Sándor Zsolt fundamentally believes in harvesting grapes at full ripeness, when they are bursting with flavour. For Freya, however, he picked his Cserszegi Fűszeres two weeks earlier than usual. Not, mind you, so that he could ferment it in stainless steel, polish it until it sparkled, throw in some carbon dioxide and three grams of residual sugar, and send it off to conquer the bottom shelves of Tesco! The earlier harvest may have given Freya a distinctly Scandinavian complexion, but there's an unfiltered twist to the story: low alcohol, barrel fermentation and ageing on fine lees. Razor-sharp acidity, aromas of pear and lime, mint and salted lemon on the finish, flint (as though we were somewhere in the Loire Valley), and just a hint of floral character. To everyone's great astonishment, it's a particular favourite with the ladies, so I recommend it to my fellow men as an aid to courtship!
Anna Luca 2022 | 94 points
Named after the women in the family, but if the previous wine was a goddess (Freya), then what on earth is this?! I had always thought that tasting an amber wine that was still drinkable at the age of four was a mission impossible. And then along comes this beauty, with perfectly integrated tannins, a deep golden colour, aromas of pear and rose (Cserszegi Fűszeres has finally given away its parentage: Traminer is its father!), a broad, generous palate and a long finish. And all of it delivered with such elegance that I completely forgot to wonder what I should eat with it. I simply drank the wine, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The fermentation technique is rather special too: the so-called sandwich method, or, as Zsolt calls it, grape berry wellness. Not because his wife takes a bath in the fermenting wine, although in my humble opinion that would open the door to an entirely different market. Rather, during the nine days of fermentation, fresh whole bunches are continuously layered on top of the older ones, and the rising carbon dioxide causes the grapes beneath to "massage" the newcomers, releasing their aromas. If only every wellness weekend could be this good! If such a thing as an elegant amber wine exists, and the phrase isn't simply a contradiction in terms, then this is it!
Lou Lee 2021 | 87 points
If you thought you'd already seen everything Cserszegi Fűszeres had to offer, think again. For one thing, there's still its much-discussed light, tank-fermented incarnation, which you will never encounter in Sándor Zsolt's cellar in Miskolc. For another, you can take lees ageing even further, spice things up with barrel fermentation and, at the end of the process (well, all right, at the beginning), throw in a little skin contact for good measure. After the previous wines, this might almost sound conventional, although in Miskolc there's always a twist to everything. Lou Lee opens with a classic orange-wine nose, almost reminiscent of Georgia: hay, straw, horehound sweets and gooseberries, a little rosewater and plenty of pear. As it opens up, Dionysian hedonism begins to take centre stage, but the palate turns out to be much more austere. A bit like a man with absolutely nothing to say, dressed in an Armani suit: a tingling touch of carbon dioxide, women turning their heads as he passes, but only because of the packaging. Of course, the fellow might turn out to be rich, and Lou Lee still has plenty of room to develop in the bottle. Perhaps, in the end, all it will take is a princess kissing the proverbial frog to turn him into a prince.
Sándorné 2020 | 90 points
One of the beauties of the Hungarian language is that you can name a wine Sándorné (meaning the wife of a man whose first name is Sándor, or whose surname is Sándor, as in the case of Sándor Zsolt's wife) and have everyone immediately think of Chardonnay when they hear it pronounced. And they wouldn't be far wrong. I doubt the winery has made another Chardonnay since, but this one certainly happened, and there's no turning back the clock now. Not that anyone needs to! Organically grown grapes, zero added sulphur, and yet the wine stands as firm as a rock, even though, if the label is to be believed, we're talking about a lady here. Thanks to six months on the lees, it has a delicate yeasty character reminiscent of a good Champagne, except that it doesn't have quite as many bubbles (to be precise, it has none whatsoever). So perhaps it isn't the ideal match for strawberries, but I would certainly recommend it before, after and even during morning sex. Well, perhaps afterwards would be best. It adds at least one extra point to your day! (One little bonus detail: this wine isn't for sale. You can only taste it at the winery. But in that case, how exactly is the morning sex supposed to happen afterwards?)
Legény 2021 | 93 points
Legény is another name that speaks for itself. In Hungarian, it refers to a man who has reached adulthood but isn't yet married. Of course, this can be rather misleading: a legény might be fifteen years old or, these days, even thirty-five, although I would be more inclined to describe a thirty-five-year-old using another wonderfully old-fashioned Hungarian word, agglegény, literally an "old lad", meaning bachelor. What do we expect of a legény? That he can stand his ground (the Hungarian expression legény a gáton, literally "a lad on the dike", describes someone who rises to the challenge), that he enjoys the legényes (a traditional Hungarian folk dance performed by young men in boots, occasionally slapping their heels together with a resounding crack), and that he knows how to court the leányok, those grown-up young women who are still unmarried. If everything goes according to plan, the story ends in marriage and children. And this particular legény has turned out exceptionally well! It was intended from the outset to be the winery's flagship wine, and the previous vintage was eight years earlier, so Sándor Zsolt clearly takes the idea that only the finest Zweigelt can become a Legény very seriously. I am delighted to report that this is one of the best Zweigelts I have ever tasted. Vibrant, elegant, with ripe tannins and an exuberance of fruit, while the finish seems to go on forever.
