Best of Budapest & Hungary

Following years of work in the Szekszárd-based family winery by the side of his mother, Ágnes Heimann, Zoltán Heimann Jr.  took over the management in 2018.

“After graduation I went on to work as a trainee at various outstanding Burgundy, Burgenland and Australian wineries. Their wines made from Pinot Noir, Syrah or Blaufränkisch just took my breath away. They were quite different from the wines I was taught to make during my years of education and also from the ones I had tasted back home,” he says. After taking the helm of his family’s vineyard, he didn’t waste much time putting his ideas into practice. From the grapes of the 2018 harvest he crafted six new wines which are not only different in concept and style from earlier Heimann wines but constitute a new line in their repertoire. “In a nutshell, I would say that the main thing about the new style is putting two local varieties on center stage: Kadarka and Kékfrankos. None of these varieties can compete with Cabernets or Merlots in body, weight or alcohol; however, they share a unique kind of fruity quality and the ability to express their terroirs. What I set out to do was not alter their character; on the contrary, it was to achieve an honest expression of the essence of their characters with the Heimann & Fiai wines.”

More body, more oak, more concentration was not what he is looking for: he gave up on the idea of producing ‘blockbusters’. This meant Heimann had to let go of things like late picking and prolonged ageing in oak. The focus today is on finding the best plots, clones, optimal ripeness and something that is less often discussed among wine lovers: fermentation. “By putting whole bunches of intact berries into the fermentation vats fermentation time increases and the resulting wines become more expressive, more individual fruit aromas come to the fore. Another addition in terms of aromas is the special leafy, sappy character deriving from the stems. We consider the aromas and flavors coming from the grapes as the main assets of the two varieties, so it is vital not to lose them during the ageing process. That is why we have opted for shorter barrel ageing and there is one lot that was aged in amphorae.”

The winery has launched its new line of wines this year. Besides Szekszárd Kadarka and Szekszárd Kékfrankos there are single vineyard bottlings coming from Porkoláb-völgy, Baranya-völgy and Bati-Kereszt. The grapes for the top of the range ’Szívem’ Kékfrankos come from a vineyard that was planted more than half a century ago, in 1967. The old vines lend it a special character though this is still in keeping with the general outlook of the rest of the range.