Best of Budapest & Hungary

South Balaton sparkling wines are on the rise both in quality and recognition. Making sparkling wines in the region has a long tradition: excellent bubblies were produced in Balatonboglár, well before the fall of communism.

Bujdosó Vineyards and Winery owns vineyards on the south shore of Lake Balaton, spanning no less than 90 hectares through the Somogy hills. Led by Ferenc Bujdosó, the winery, based in Balatonlelle, is one of the major players of the region, with three generations working together in the vineyards. 2016 marked a new milestone in the winery’s history: that’s when their first traditional method sparkling wine was launched. The Bujdosó family has a special fondness for bubblies, and so has the region, featuring the neighboring Balatonboglár Winery (BB), which was established in 1956 as a State Farm, and which produced sparkling wine so popular that it was exported to the Soviet Union in large quantities. Ferenc Bujdosó wrote his graduate thesis on sparkling wines and completed his postgraduate training period working for a German sparkling wine producer, as back in 1989 he aspired to become the cellar master of BB. With the sudden changes in politics, however, his original plans flew out of the window: BB was sold, market targets were reconsidered, and eventually, the Bujdosós decided to make the family business their top priority. This also meant the shelving of any plans to produce sparkling wines for a good while. The ensuing period was about the gradual development of the family estate with significant contribution from Ferenc Bujdosó Sr. whose 50-year experience in the field proved to be an invaluable asset when it came to matching varieties and plots in the process of planting new vineyards and reconstructing older ones.

Sparkling and bubbles never completely disappeared from their plans; it was the Bujdosós who made the first semi-sparkling wines at Lake Balaton. Today there are three different semi-sparklers in their product line. They never gave up on their dream of producing traditional method sparkling wines either. Eventually the first Bujdosó traditional method sparkling wine was made in the cellars of Garamvári, one of the pioneers of sparkling wine production in Hungary. “I had a very clear idea as to what kind of sparkling wine I wanted to make,” Ferenc says. “Our style is characterized by fruit; it is the world of more serious Proseccos that we feel attached to, so this is what we are aiming for. Brut nature is not our cup of tea. The 8-9 g/l dosage of sugar in our sparkling wines enhances the fruit and this is our own South Balaton style traditional method sparkling wine was born. Champagne is not our point of reference, it wouldn’t make any sense to compare ourselves to them. This is why at the moment we are working with Királyleányka instead of Chardonnay. For traditional sparklers we believe in extended ageing on lees for a period of 24-36 months is optimal. We are curious to see how Királyleányka responds to such long ageing, what is the potential of the wine, as there is no precedent yet, unlike with Pinot Noir, there is no experience one could rely on. Getting the base wine right is really important: of course one has to be careful with alcohol levels, but the tricky part is to get the fruit ripe, while retaining a bright but not raw acidity. The key to achieving this goal is to pinpoint the right moment to pick and also to carefully control yields in the vineyards. In the first vintage, 5000 bottles were made and step by step 500-1000 bottle batches were disgorged at various intervals. Armed with this first-hand experience, we felt more liberated to experiment with recent vintages. The time has come to see how bottle size influences ageing as we couldn’t resist the temptation and bottled some magnums. One thing we know for sure, our bubbly is an excellent companion to sunset sailing. Mind you, in our family it’s an all-round favorite regardless of the occasion.”