The bad news about Béla Vincze – Hungary’s “Winemaker of the Year” in 2005 – keeps getting worse. Vincze (above, looking… well, you tell us) apparently shrugged off earlier reports that some wine sold under his label had been improperly fortified with added glycerol by claiming that he hadn’t produced the offending batches himself. But today’s Népszabadság reveals that some wines he did make contain elevated levels of the stuff. Even worse, the doctored wine is from 2005, the same year he was chosen “Winemaker of the Year.” All we can say is, at least he wasn’t voted Hungarian rum distiller of the year.
Nice pic. He does look a bit sinister.
The corks in his Bikavir I bought a year ago are shit. They are porous and leak all the way through. A whole case was like this. So he is obviously cutting corners. I stopped buying his wine now. I used to buy it quite a bit.
If it really is his 2005 prize winning wine then I take back my previous comment–he should lose his award and he should by fined heavily for tarring the industrys reputation.
these awards, as most things in hungary, depend on cronyism. csaba demeter produces (foreign) award winning wines and regularly is “forgotten” to be invited to domestic wine festivals. his sin? does not care to kiss ass rather he distinguishes himself on the wines produced. XY is getting to be pretty pricey as there are less bottles left, but i’m proud to say we’ve put a major dent in his supply while it lasted.
another good domestic wine maker – small cellar – is gabor attila nemeth from a small place called gyongyostarjan. his 2005 “concubina” made very fine dry red for everyday consumption at a decent price. http://www.concubina.hu/boraim/concubina-voros-2006.html
I do not know about glycerol but it may be better than this http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2730715/Butchered-man-used-for-kebabs.html. I do not fancy either
Well, if they had taken that approach the wines would have certainly had enough body