‘Once upon a time…’ Wait a minute. Allow me to come back to this a little later.
I truly believe in Kékfrankos as a world class variety! And I am a firm believer in Kékfrankos from Sopron!
Among her numerous intriguing grape varieties, Hungary has Kékfrankos, a quite remarkable black grape variety, which is widely planted in Hungary and to me it has so long been misunderstood by the broader audience. Being so intensely planted – and it is the most planted black grape in Hungary at some 7,500 ha., historically, lots of not very interesting wine has been produced.
If you want to make high quality Kékfrankos, keep your yields low and make sure, that your
fruit is ripe whilst preserving the acidity in your wine. For this reason, site selection is highly important and in Sopron, the presence of Neusiedler See makes the predominantly east-facing slopes above it premium sites.
Somewhat neglected or misunderstood for decades and decades, fortunately, in regions across Hungary, Kékfrankos is now being taken increasingly more serious as a variety very
much capable of producing absolutely beautiful varietal red wines. Regions such as the PDO’s of Eger, Székszard and Villány.
Kékfrankos is this lovely black grape, which is perfectly capable of delivering beautiful wines, that may make you think of an attractive combination of the cherry from Pinot Noir and the peppery notes of a Syrah. Structurally, it contains plenty of refreshing acidity with lovely tannins.
Delicious, fresh versions with a more red-fruited character and with hardly any oak influence are available, but Kékfrankos does have great affinity with oak, which compliments the fruit characteristics very nicely, once the required concentration of ripe fruit in the wine is there.
Kékfrankos is well-known in Central Europe as Blaufränkisch in Austria and Lemberger in
Germany, as well as by others names in other countries, but nowhere is it as important as in Hungary and I do wonder, why Hungary has been able to promote Kékfrankos in a similar way, that the beautiful Furmint has been for whites.
The grape is already cultivated in premium red wine regions – by premium producers – and given Kékfrankos’ readiness to express terroir, I really hope to see even bigger numbers of quite distinct wines of the highest quality being put on the market from Villány and Székszard in the south, Eger to the northeast of Budapest and Sopron and Pannonhalma in the very northwest respectively.
To no other region, however, Kékfrankos means as much, as does it to Sopron, located virtually on the Austrian border.
The city of Sopron proudly brands itself as Capital of Kékfrankos and today, numerous
producers make beautiful wine in the area, including Péter Wetzer, Steigler, Enikő Luka, Franz Weninger Jr. and Pfneiszl.
The stories about Kékfrankos may be as many as are the names, it is known by. But I have to admit, that I particularly love this story:
Emperor Napoleon and his army made it all the way to the city of Sopron. His soldiers occupied the city and stayed with the local ‘ponzichters’, drinking their wine. The soldiers learned about another wine, an especially good one, and asked for it. ‘Only if you pay with blue Francs!’, was the answer.
Kékfrankos does translate into blue Francs.
I find Birgit Pfneiszl to be a brilliant interpreter of Kékfrankos. Her Kékfrankos is produced from grapes from vineyards sitting beautifully above Neusiedler See.
Neusiedler See moderates the climate during the hottest summer days and provides a lovely freshness to the wine.
Ujra Együtt is Birgit Pfneiszl’s beautiful example of a lighter, juicy and highly enjoyable
young Kékfrankos displaying sour cherry, roses and pepper on the nose and on the palate, you get a combination of ripe sour cherry and black cherry with an appealing, mineral sensation.
The barrique aged version is just so well-made, year after year, with such consistently good balance between the use of Hungarian (of course) oak and the right concentration of ripe fruit. This, much more full-bodied red will offer you a lovely combination of ripe fruit including black cherry and mulberry as well as white pepper, cloves and cinnamon. In some years, such as 2017, the wine has an added freshness to it. Like an underlying note of freshly crushed blackcurrants as well as capsicum or green bell pepper. This is the more gastronomic wine of the pair with higher levels of tannins, which on the other hand will
never over-power the fruit.
The true fairy tale, however, is Mesés Vidék.
To me, Mesés Vidék could easily be considered the winemaker telling a love story through a bottle of wine, too.
Mesés Vidék tells the story of the Pfneiszl family and their connection to as well as their
deep love for Sopron from so many decades ago, before the iron curtain cut Europe into halves and with it so many families – including the Pfneisls. It is the story of Franz Pfneisl waking up the soils of Sopron from a multi-decade long beauty sleep and about his daughters, Birgit and Katrin taking over the realms to build on their father’s legacy. To me, this is an ‘ode to family’.
The full picture includes knowing, that the barrique aged mono-varietal wines of Birgit
Pfneiszl still carry the handwriting of her father on the front label, but the design of the labels has been undergoing changes a few times at the hands of the daughters since the 2004 vintage and up to this day. A lovely feature is adding a ‘one-liner’ to the wines each year, like ‘Starling’s Favourite’ in 2005 or ‘White April’ in 2017.
With the launching of Mesés Vidék, Birgit Pfneiszl wanted to go above and beyond and show to the world, just how big the potential is for Kékfrankos in the PDO of Sopron.
Thus far, Mesés Vidék has only been produced in 3 years, as the plan was always to only produce it from the very best vintages, the first being 2003 followed by 2007 (both vintages were only available in magnums) and again in 2015.
Only super-premium, carefully selected and de-stemmed fruit from Pfneiszl’s oldest vineyard, harvested in the beginning of October, goes into Mesés Vidék. The slow, spontaneous fermentation takes place in open-top vats and open-top barrels at low temperatures with 2-3 weeks on the skins. The wine was aged 3 years in oak and another 3 years in bottle before being released.
All the little details surrounding each bottle of Mesés Vidék, such as the wooden box,
which contains the paper-wrapped wine, the little lock on the box and the plentiful detailed engravings, tell this beautiful story perfectly and make this a wonderful present. Only 1,500 bottles were made in 2015 and each bottle is numbered.
I tasted the 2015 on a few occasions just recently and it is still just a baby.
Such power and concentration of fruit in this full-bodied wine. This is truly a wine flexing
all of its muscles, but there is a very nice balance to it. Just so massive, primary black fruit, including blackberry, black plum and prune as well as blueberry, plum compote and dried fig, obvious oak with mocha, dark and bitter, high cocoa content chocolate, cloves, tobacco and toast. Soy and a note of fresh leather join the choir.
With uplifting acidity and ripe, velvety and very well integrated tannins, the wine has the structure to match the concentration of fruit and ensure, that the wine doesn’t feel heavy.
Definitely a wine for long time cellaring – if you can keep your hands off of it…
I tasted the 2003 a few years back and it kept up remarkably well, which goes to show
the longevity of these wines.
Mesés Vidék is the wine to serve to surprise and seriously impress your wine-loving friends
– and if served back in the days of the soldiers of Emperor Napoleon, this wine would indeed have commanded payment in blue Francs!
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