Hungarian Wine: Where to Taste Wine in Budapest

Hello, hello, hello! Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Porky. So, excuse me, we spent a good portion of the winter in Hungary, tasting through the wine regions of Hungary. You know, Budapest is maybe my favorite city. Budapest, Hungary in Europe. And Shireen's actually fallen in love with it too, here. And there's a lot of really cool places to check out, eat, and also taste wines. And I'm going to talk about two of our favorite places where we taste wine in Budapest. Now, before I get started, I want to let you know that this video has not been paid for in any way. We've just had fantastic experiences in both places. When we first arrived here in Hungary, one guy that reached out to us was the owner of Konyvi Bar, which I basically think means just book. Konyvi, I think, is books, because the restaurant is laid out like a library. There's lots of books everywhere. They have a library and a book theme for a menu. But the cool thing is the owner, Mihai, one of the co-owners, is a big fan of organic wines and small producers in Hungary. And he showed us so many interesting producers. It's right downtown. It's in District 7 of Budapest, one of the cool hip areas. And some of my favorite wines that he showed me, I think, were, he showed me a couple of dry formants that were fantastic. One called, one by Montium, a small winery called Montium. And he also introduced us to a fantastic small producer who's a half French, sorry, it's a French woman and a Hungarian man called Kikelet. We tasted their dry formant and their Haasleveleu there. I think those wines are amazing. It's too bad they're small production and they're not easy to get because I would stock up on them if they were easier. He also showed us this fantastic producer called Sentasi, who is near Budapest. And he gave us one of the red wines and I thought it was fantastic. And the red wine, I think, was five to seven euros. One of the best values I think we've tasted this year. Cool atmosphere. Go check them out if you're in Budapest. The other place we really like to taste is a quite famous place for wine. It's called the Tasting Table in Budapest. It was started by a Hungarian man and an American woman. And it's a really cool place. It's not a bar, it's a tasting room. And what they do is they take you through guided tastings of Hungarian wines. Everything is laid out wonderfully. They have maps, they have small plates with brilliant, brilliant Hungarian preserved meats and cheeses. And it's really cool. You can do certain flights, you can taste by glass. We kind of tasted through everything. They even have some Tokaj dating back to 1972 on offer, which we tasted. Some of my favorite producers, we went there last night, we tasted through about 20 of the wines. I really like, they have a small producer called Erzsébet, which means Elizabeth. It's a small producer in Tokaj, a sibling, a brother and sister, kind of own it, run it. They make some fantastic dry wines. They also have some wonderful wines from the region of Somló. Somló is a small volcanic hill in central Hungary. Very mineral, smoky, fiery wines. And I think, let me see if I can remember the name of the place. It was, let's see here, Kolonich. Sorry, Kolonich, another small producer. I thought the dry fruit was fantastic. Shireen even compared it to a high level Chablis, so that's pretty darn cool as well. Another thing that we tasted when we were there is Royal Tokaj & Co. They're six petunias from 2013. Royal Tokaj & Co. is one of the bigger producers in Hungary. I wasn't super excited to taste it when they brought it out, but the 2013, I have to tell you, is fantastic. So if you're in Budapest, you want to know about Hungarian wine, these two places I would go seek out right away. They're both close to downtown in District 7. If you're at Coney V Bar, you have to tell them that you're a big wine lover because they have a bunch of small wines in the fridge that they'll bring out for you. And of course, Tasting Table has everything laid out for you. Really cool places to taste. Check them out. Guys, if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel. I will see you at the next episode.