When we first saw Szent György-hegy, the hill that now gives home to our estate, we have utterly fallen in love with it. The spirit and the untouched nature of this place has changed our lives forever.We started making wine just for ourselves, which is still to this day is inspired by the excitement of experimentation and the ways to discover the potential in the terroir that surrounds us.
We don't use commercial yeast, we let the juice to ferment by its own yeast flora, which gives our wines a special, unique and distinct aroma. By the constant expelling of wine additives we can preserve the fruit’s original characteristics and the unique minerality of the volcanic soil. Our main goal is making natural wines in order to show the most of the terroir. We try to focus on exploring traditional Hungarian grape varieties and cultivate what is given by nature.
Beside cultivating vineyards and making wine, we felt the need to provide accomodation for guests arriving to winetasting. When we bought the vineyards on the hillside, we also transformed the old summer houses into guesthouses.
OUR VINEYARDS
Our estate is made up of three very different vineyards, situated on the south side of Szent György-hegy. We have named these three places after their sizes. Our guesthouses are surrounded by "Másfél", which means 1.5 hectares, then we have "Hétésfél", which is 7 hectares and is close to the chapel that is the symbol of the hill. On the lower slopes, we have "Kilencésfél" which is our biggest contiguous vineyard with almost 10 hectares of vines.
The majority of "Kilencésfél" was planted in '99, others are from 2002, situated at 118 to 136 meters altitude. This vineyard is enclosed by two small slopes, on top of them the soil full of basalt stones, on the lower parts it is a mix of clay, loess, sand and brown earth. Grape varieties: Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Piros bakator and Kék bakator. The last two are ancient Hungarian types.
"Másfél" used to be lot of small plots, which we turned into one. Its lowest point is at 141 meters, its highest is at 170 meters, which mean around 12-15% elevation. The soil is mostly clay, loes and some brown earth with reddish hues high in iron. The highest part of this vineyard has basalt stones, with huge pieces of rocks, and at 1.5 meter deep we may find sandstone. The small plots used to be quite mixed in variety, but mostly Olaszrizling. We harvested the vines for two vintages but we decided to make the plot uniform so we replanted it in 2014 with Chenin Blanc and Rózsakő. The second one is a grape variety that was invented in 1975 in Badacsony, just one hill away from us.
Our third vineyard "Hétésfél" is situated close to Lengyel-kápolna, a chapel which is the symbol of our hill. This is our most talented and interesting plot at 180 meters altitude. We manage to cultivate it by tractors, but the soil is full of basalt stones and huge rocks which make the job complicated.
In 2015 we started to replant the plot with Furmint, Hárslevelű, Rhein riesling and Kéknyelű. On the other hand we have left about 2,5 hectares of 40-year-old vines, Rhein riesling. We believe that in time this vineyard will make our best wines.
AGROTOURISMIn "Másfél" we have transformed four weekend houses into guesthouses, which have the most wonderful view of Balaton, Szigliget, Badacsony and Keszthelyi-hegység. It is the kind of breathtaking sight that you will never forget and give you an instant feeling of tranquility and serenity.
Our idea is to create an agroturism, much like the ones in Tuscany. The intent is to have a place for guests to relax and be at ease, far away from their busy lives. As the houses are in the middle of the vineyards, our visitors can watch and even participate in agricultural works.
THE TEAMThe most important part of the estate is the team that is behind the scenes. We have three young guys, namely Zoli, Peti and Patrik, who take care of vine cultivation, tractors and any related jobs or helping out in the cellar. So many of our guests appreciate the result of Vali's and Evelin's work which is maintaining the gardens around the guesthouses and cleaning the rooms. They also bake bread for breakfast for you to enjoy and they even help out in the vineyard.
We can only thank my Mother who has come up with the design of the guesthouses, in the interior and on the outside as well. She did not get tired of planning the decor from the colour of beams to choosing pillows. I would also like to thank my Father, who with his enthusiasm and energy allowed the estate to be built from scratch. And also sharing his experience and different views in situations helped the estate grow in a few years.
And also we have Csete, the vizsla, who has been here from almost day one. His role is entertaining the guests and happily chewing on corks dropping from the tables during winetasting.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTI would like to thank immensly our family business in Debrecen, Mixvill LTD. The employees who have helped us out many times with under vine mowing and hoeing. Furthermore, I thank Gergő Sepsi, Imre Kiss and András Oláh, also known as the team of Filmino for making beautiful videos of our estate and the team of Pixelephant who developed our website and take care of any graphic design tasks.
To sum it all up, I would like to thank my beloved Klaudia, who helps me with her creative thoughts and enriches our lives with her ideas. She takes a huge part of the jobs prior to our pop-up restaurant events, also helps us with her great sense of style and design as well. And most importantly she is the one who is the firm believer that we are on the right way with the estate.
István Bencze
