Wine: ‘Eastern Europe is again making excellent wines’

By BRIAN ELLIOTT
Published on Tuesday 14 February 2012 00:00

IN THE 35 years from 1950, UK wine drinking started to grow rapidly – rising by 250 per cent, according to some estimates – and eastern Europe was an early beneficiary of this increased demand.

Bulgarian cabernet, for example, became the everyday drink of choice for the chattering classes, and wine merchants’ shelves sagged under the weight of brands like Lutomer Laski Rizling (as it must now be called) and Bull’s Blood.

Then the wine world shifted on its axis. As the Iron Curtain rose, so did the dominance of New World wines – at the expense of eastern Europe. This was partly because the broadly welcomed political upheavals in the old Warsaw Pact countries threw out the baby (the established framework of their wine industries) with the bathwater. The demise of the old centralised agencies removed many of the structures that linked growers with winemakers, grape varieties with their most suitable terroir and vineyards with long-term plant-management regimes.

Another 20 years on, and thanks to substantial investment and the efforts of dedicated wine-makers, those countries are again making excellent wines – albeit on a much smaller scale. My quest to unearth some of the results began in Hungary because things were never as bad there as elsewhere, largely because of the ongoing popularity of its world-class dessert wine Tokaji. To see just how good it can be – and if you can live with the inevitable price – seek out (probably online) something like 2005 Royal Tokaji Betsek 6 Puttonyos Primae Classis Tokaji Aszu (around £50 for a 50cl bottle), with its beautiful balance between zesty acidity and peach-based sweetness.

Sweeties – however brilliant – are, nevertheless, only a small element of the world’s wine production, so the industry in Hungary puts its day-to-day focus on other wines. Among the whites, I was taken with the organically farmed 2010 Hilltop Estate Gewürztraminer (£7.99, Waitrose) and its rounded honey and lychee influences that are slightly more subdued than in Alsace versions.

Sticking with Waitrose, I also sampled its 2010 Chapel Hill Pinot Noir (£6.99), a perfumed, nicely textured wine with deep black cherry flavours and some very lively acidity that provides honest-to-goodness, middle-of-the-road pinot.

A slightly more complex red from an excellent vintage is 2009 Hilltop Estate Premium Red Selection (£7.25, Wine Society) from the Szekszard region. The winemaker has blended the usual suspects (merlot and both cabernets) with the local kekfrankos, an almost beaujolais-style grape. The result is a very structured wine with reasonably firm tannins underpinning its balanced plum fruit. However, it also has an obvious career as ‘food wine’ – I was hugely impressed, for example, with the way it mingled with and accentuated a quite hard-to-match blue cheese.

Beyond Hungary, other parts of eastern Europe are also producing impressive red, so it is good to see Sainsbury’s going to Romania for its delightful yet inexpensive house pinot noir (£4.49), with neatly oaked but spicy cherry fruit. Along similar lines, Tesco has a Romanian red, 2010 First Cape Discovery Series Merlot (£6.99), with very fruit-forward flavours of bramble, plum and cranberry supported by a minty chocolate finish and juicy acidity that combine to deliver an enjoyable, light, crowd-pleasing red. The pick of the bunch, though, was 2008 Edoardo Miroglio Pinot Nero (£12.50, www.swig.co.uk), a terrific, complex, smooth version with classy touches of violets and raspberries and a neat cherry stone finish; excellent wine by any standard.

Looking at whites, I usually enjoy renditions of the irsai oliver grape, a local variety rather like a very fresh and lively expression of muscat. Morrisons often has well-priced versions. I was intrigued, however, by 2010 Puklavec & Friends Sauvignon Blanc (£8.99, Waitrose), from Slovenia, which uses hand-picked grapes to produce a fresh, clean white with green apple, hazelnut and celery flavours and a sharp initial prickle that mellows into rounder pear influences if you give it half an hour to breathe once you open it.

There is, therefore, much of interest and sometimes quirkiness for anyone prepared to reverse the line from the Pet Shop Boys song and go east.

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