Monthly Archives: June 2014

Label photo courtesy of Vending Machine Winery

Readers of this blog could be forgiven for feeling at times frustrated, because after I extol the virtues of Somló Juhfark or Slovak Furmint, I frequently write something like, “You’ll have trouble finding this anywhere other than Bratislava.” And let’s face it, Bratislava is just not at the top of everyone’s travel bucket list. So let’s break from obscure Eastern European wines for a moment, and consider a nice red from a winery in Napa.

Napa does not figure prominently in this blog — Arizona has more entries — but that’s not to say there aren’t enticingly unusual cuvées coming from America’s most famous wine region. As a gift for watching their cats, some thoughtful friends recently brought over a Napa red (or more accurately, a Lodi/Sierra Nevada Foothills red) which turned out to be one of the most unusual blends I’ve ever encountered.

The label (right) already indicates that this wine won’t be your usual Cabernet. The 2011 Vending Machine Winery “Horror Show” is in fact an absolutely insane-sounding blend of Sousão, a red Portuguese grape figuring prominently in Port; Montepulciano, an Italian variety planted mostly in central Italy; and Tannat, which originated in southwest France but is more well-known as the national grape of Uruguay. How on earth did these three disparate varieties come to live in the same bottle? I telephoned the winery to find out.

Neil Gernon, who owns the winery with his wife, Monica Bourgeois, answered my call. He explained that “Horror Show” is a slang term used in the film A Clockwork Orange to indicate “dark, brooding fun.” And who wouldn’t enjoy a wine that tasted like that? So Gernon and Bourgeois got to work, thinking about dark grapes to include in a potential Horror Show blend. They hit right away on Sousão, because it “makes Petit Sirah look light,” according to Gernon. And Petit Sirah seemed a little too obvious in any case.

Building from brooding Sousão, they hit on Montepulciano, which is “dark in color but with bright, red-berry fruit,” Gernon explained. But the blend still needed something else, some undergirding of earth. Bourgeois and Gernon settled on Tannat, which adds “earthy, funky” notes and some tannic power. So there’s the initial fun fruit of the Montepulciano, the brooding mid-palate of the Sousão and the dark, powerful finish of the Tannat. After Gernon explained it, this extremely unorthodox blend sounded like the most sensible thing in the world. 

And it works! I recently brought the bottle to my parents’ house for a stir-fry dinner on a cool evening, and the wine’s dark, meaty fruit and rowdy acids paired deliciously with the beef. The wine had rustic red fruit, notes of iron and earth and a lovely aromatic quality on top balancing its sense of thickness. The wine wasn’t fussy, as you might gather from the description of its finish on the website: “Just when you feel safe, the thrill ramps up like a graveyard shovel hit to the mouth.” 

I wouldn’t describe this wine as refined, but I certainly enjoyed it in any case. If you’re in the mood for something big, bold and rustic, with lots of fruit, lots of acids and lots of earth, Horror Show is an ideal choice. And its beautiful but distressing label, which changes every year, makes this wine perfect for Halloween. Dark, brooding fun indeed.

You can find Horror Show and other Vending Machine Winery bottlings at the stores and restaurants listed here. Horror Show retails for about $28; not inexpensive, but a reasonable price for the flavor it delivers.

If you’ve had Hungarian wine, you’ve likely tried something from Tokaj, long famed for its sweet whites, or something from Eger, famous (and infamous) for its Bull’s Blood. But few bottles are exported from Hungary’s smallest wine region, Somló. Importer and Hungarian wine expert Athena Bochanis of Palinkerie first alerted me to the potential of wines from the slopes of this extinct volcano, a single odd hill poking up from the countryside north of Lake Balaton. I kept its name in the back of my head on my recent trip to Hungary, hoping to find a bottle or two from Somló on a restaurant wine list.

Somló wines proved to be elusive, even in Hungary, since it’s the country’s smallest wine region. But at last, at Café Pierrot in Buda, the wine list had four different Somló selections, including a Juhfark by the glass. I can’t deny that my heart skipped a bit of a beat. I’ve tasted a lot of unusual wines over the course of three years writing Odd Bacchus, but Somló Juhfark had to rank among the most obscure wines I’ve ever encountered.

“This is a wine from Somló?” I asked the waiter, pointing to the word “Somló” on the menu, eyes widening with anticipation.

“Yes… from Somló,” he replied, also pointing to the word.

“And it’s a Juhfark? A Juhfark?” I stupidly pointed to that word as well.

“Yes. Yes. A Juhfark… from Somló.” The waiter did not point to the words this time, so as not to lose contact with my increasingly wild eyes. “Would you… like a glass? Sir?” He spoke slowly and carefully, in excellent English.

I suppose most of the tourists he serves (or the Hungarians, for that matter) do not tend to lose their composure at the sight of the words “Somló Juhfark.” Which is perhaps why, when he discovered that they had actually run out of Somló Juhfark, he dispatched a colleague to a nearby sister restaurant to procure a bottle.

Juhfark, according to The Oxford Companion to Wine, is a “distinctive but almost extinct white grape variety,” and how often does one have the chance to sample a wine made from grapes at once distinctive and almost extinct? I can find precious little additional information about this variety, which translates as “Ewe’s Tail” or “Sheep’s Tail” in Hungarian, other than that it was almost wiped out because of the phylloxera louse. Come on, ampelographers. You can do better.

I did find some juicy tidbits about Somló, however, “whose wood-aged, blended wines once enjoyed a similar reputation to those of Tokaj,” the Oxford Companion tells us. In fact, if “popular memory” is to be believed, “in the imperial court of Vienna, the newlyweds drank Somló wines on their wedding night to promote the birth of a male heir to the throne,” an uncharacteristically steamy Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia relates.

At last, the waiter poured me a glass of 2011 Somlói Apátsági Pince Juhfark to pair with my “Pike Perch with Old Fish Soup Sauce and Fish Dumplings,” a dish far more delicious than it sounds. The wine had a sweet, heavy aroma leavened with notes of green tobacco. Broad, orangey acids balanced the very rich, honeyed texture, aided in that effort by an aromatic quality on top. It developed slowly and deliberately and forcefully on the palate, tightening up on the finish. Paired with the fish, the acids really blossomed and the wine positively popped. Wow.

You may have trouble finding a Somló Juhfark at your local wine shop, but if you go to Hungary — and some of you undoubtedly will — this is a wine to seek out on a borlap (wine list).

The chance to sample wines like this is one of the reasons I travel. What a privilege, to drink a glass of a wine that once invigorated the Viennese court, made from grapes now almost extinct.  I paid less than $8 for that glass of wine, and I’ll never forget it.

Macik “Mono” Furmint

I’ve never heard anyone express interest in Slovak wine. I’ve never seen a bottle on an American shelf. But I am certainly glad I tried some local wines while visiting Bratislava. As in all Eastern Bloc countries, the Slovak vineyards and wineries suffered under communism, which demanded only quantity, not quality. Now, things are changing for the better, and if you have the fortune to visit Slovakia, you’ll discover an array of unusual and delicious wines on local menus.

I had this 2011 Macik Winery “Mono” Furmint at Ufo, a surprisingly excellent restaurant on top of a communist-era bridge crossing the Danube. This 100% Furmint comes from Slovakia’s tiny chunk of Tokaj, Eastern Europe’s most renowned wine region, the vast majority of which lies in Hungary. It had aromas of honey and green peppercorns, and flavors of sweet fruit, lemony acids and focused gingery spice. Despite its honey tones, the Mono is a dry wine, and its acids worked very well with food.

Slovakia exports a little of its wine to the Czech Republic and Poland, and almost none to the U.S. So should you find yourself in Vienna, take an extra day or two and visit Bratislava, which is just an hour away. The city is an absolute delight, and as unlikely as it sounds, so are the local wines.