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Frigyes Bott named Newcomer of the Year on Budapest International Wine Festival

Tastes from abroad

The festival traditionally invites a guest country to display its viticultural fare alongside that of the host. This year, however, it was the turn of ethnic Hungarian winemakers from neighbouring countries Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia and Romania. So we head north, into Slovakia, and the wines of Frigyes Bott, who was named “Newcomer of the Year” in the Hungarian “Winemakers’ Winery” awards last year. He offered up some delightfully fresh whites, including a crisp and pure Zöldveltelini.

Then came the surprise, a classy 2008 Pinot Noir that would have no cause to feel embarrassed in the company of everyday wines from Burgundy, the spiritual homeland of this grape. Bott’s vineyards are near Sturovo, just over the Danube from Hungary, where conditions are similar to the Ászár-Neszmely wine region across the the river. Bott believes that Hungary’s wine regions, and of course his corner of Slovakia, have all the attributes of soil and climate to produce fare as good as that from the world’s best-known wine regions.

Source: The Budapest Times

Written by Robert Hodgson   
Monday, 20 September 2010

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