Wine buffs in the English-speaking world often refer to unexpectedly great bottles as “sleepers.” But the other, more traditional use of the word “sleep” might be better employed to describe my reaction to the oh-so-predictable announcement last week that Vylyan had been named “Cellar of the Year” by Hungary’s three most important wine associations. According to this piece by Hungarian wire service MTI, the National Council of Wine Communities (Hegyközségek Nemzeti Tanácsa), Hungarian Wine Academy (Magyar Bor Akadémia) and the Association of Hungarian Wine Growers (Magyar Szőlő- és Bortermelők Szövetsége) all agreed that the much-awarded Villány winemaker needed yet another award. Meanwhile, second-place went to Tokaj Kereskedőház Zrt., the state-owned monolith that churns out bottles of discount Tokaji of the sort often found in hypermarkets and tourist shops across Hungary.
This year’s Az Év Pincészete winner joins such illustrious names as Bock (top prize in 1997), Disznókő (2005) and is best known for making hearty, French-style wines capable of standing up even to the strongest Hungarian paprika, which, if there were such a thing, would be just as likely to win “spice of the year.” Zzzzzz.
I guess they have to give an “award” to “somebody.”
P.S. Since most Hungarian wine is crap, I guess this stuff really isn’t so bad, just highly overpriced.
Hey, it’s not true that most (premium) Hungarian wine is crap – just that it’s prob not really priced to move compared to countries where the estates are sooo much bigger, etc.
But the issue is just that they have no imagination, or something like that, and only pick the names that everyone already knows. But this attitude of “the already famous must be good” does help ensure that smaller, high-quality producers stay in the shawdows…