When city-dwellers think of wine, their minds usually turn to store shelves and high mark-up restaurant wine lists. But in Eger, or any of Hungary’s 23 winegrowing regions, wine is all about popping in to the local termelő for a chat and a fröccs before departing with as many bottles (or plastic jugs) as your car (or horse and cart) can carry. Thummerer Pince, one of famous region’s most famous independent producers, offers something in the middle – a rustic experience spiffy enough for the most demanding urbanite. While the cellar is clean and the wine of high quality, the food on offer is as ample, fatty and delicious as you would expect at any peasant wedding – and offers excellent value, too.
But first, let’s show you around, because that’s exactly what Éva Thummerer does – in Hungarian, English or German – when you arrive for your appointment (call 06-20-946-2178 to make a booking) at the pincészet (cellar complex/winery). Much like Hungarian wine culture itself, the cellar is an interesting blend of old and new: 2,000 square meters of tunneling hewn by hand and chisel into the tufa (25-million-year-old volcanic rock) around a century ago, to which a further 2,000 square meters were added by a state-of-the-art giant drill in 2002. The Thummerer family, which made the shift from the flower business to the wine business in 1982, and moved to its current location in Noszvaj 18 years ago, currently employs around 30. It produces a total of around 80 hectoliters (80,000 liters) of 24 varieties of wine from the vineyards surrounding Eger, though the family aims to reduce this somewhat bloated portfolio of offerings to around a dozen once it has “distilled” its experiences with both the Hungarian market and the Eger soil and microclimate. Anyway, looking at all those barrels is thirsty work, so it’s on to the main event: the wine tasting and dinner.
This takes place in a purpose-built cave cut into the rock a small distance from the cellars used to make and store the wine. The atmosphere is informal, with picnic-style tables that are ideal for after-dinner mingling. The set meal (Ft 5,200/€20), starts with a taste of egri királyleányka (a varietal originating from Transylvania that makes a refreshing summer wine and pleasant aperitif) and a small shared cheese and bread platter that satisfies immediate hunger but gives little indication of the banquet to come. This is followed by a fuller barique Chardonnay and the opening of the culinary floodgates.
Each one of the three concurrent main courses is a meal in its own right. They are listed here in order of appearance, but are actually piled onto the table in quick succession. The first feast to arrive was the székelykáposztás csülök, an enormous pork knuckle on a bed of stewed cabbage spiced with juniper berries and kakukkfű (thyme). The meat was suitably fatty – there can be no doubt about that – but it was so soft, tender and delicious that it did not seem heavy or overwhelmingly unhealthy at all – especially alongside the Betram Cuvée, an easy-drinking red, and a tasty Cabernet Sauvignon. Which is a very good news… there is plenty more of the same to come.
The duck comes to the table whole, to be carved up by the guests themselves, and follows the same successful formula as the other dishes – roasted in a traditional wood-fired clay oven until the skin is irresistibly crispy and golden and the meat is perfectly soft and juicy. Like the juniper berries hidden among the cabbage, the duck has its own surprise – the wedges of quince inside the bird bring out the best of its already fruity flavor. This is served at around the same time as the much fuller and most excellent 2004 Bikavér Reserve (Thummerer produces one of Eger’s finest varieties of “Bull’s Blood”), and a crunchy mixed fresh salad drowned in balsamic vinegar and oil.
Despite the emphasis on meat and gluttony, there is also a veggie option of “broccoli bake” (which must be specified in advance) and almost as an afterthought, the kolbász (spicy) and hurka (blood) sausage arrives with a tray of crunchy rosemary roast potatoes, but by then it’s too much, too late for most at the table, who have usually had more than their fill.
Then there is dessert: freshly baked corn bread topped with apple slices, accompanied by a sweet Muscat Ottonel, or, if you are lucky, the limited-edition “Zenith,” hand-labeled by grandma Thummerer. An indication of how good it was is that people still found space to fit some in.
The sensual onslaught is completed by a Törköly pálinka made from the skin and seeds left over in the wine press. To emphasize that this is very much as family business, the tables are cleared by the next generation of Thummerers, who – it must be said – outshine most of their grown-up rivals in the Hungarian catering industry.
Once the bulging stomach has been settled by the pálinka, a bar is set up at the far end of the room for visitors to buy an extra bottle of their favorite wine to be consumed there and then – or a crate or two for the cellar at home. And after a dizzying feed and generous wine tasting, the family could easily charge a little bit extra, but they don’t. The cheapest wines are just Ft 800 (€2.50), with the excellent Bull’s Blood Reserve weighing in at Ft 3,500 (€13).
They say that wine goes best with food, so it follows that where there is fine wine there must also be good food. An evening with the winegrowing Thummerer family supports this hypothesis – for most guests, the excellent wine is eclipsed by the incredible meal. The only regret is that there is never anything like this downtown.
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