Hungarian Wine Challenge – Vizi Pincészet, Etyek (City & Wine tour)
Like lots of people, I love a challenge! In September 2024, I set myself the challenge, while visiting Hungary, of travelling to multiple wine regions, tastings, festivals and other wine events in order to find some of the best wines in the country. The challenge started on 1 September and finished towards the end of the month.
Along the journey there were a number of places I visited. Among them was the Vizi winery in Etyek.
About the winery
For about as long as I have been travelling to Hungary, I have been going on a wine tour which travels from Budapest to Etyek, run by City & Wine. You can use my affiliate link to book the wine tour here. The tour runs in the morning and afternoon with the option for either 2 or 3 winery visits and either lunch or dinner depending on the time of day. The morning is 2 wineries plus lunch and the afternoon is 3 wineries plus dinner.
The Vizi winery is one of the wineries which they visit regularly. Etyek is a historic wine making town. And the cellar row here dates back to the 1860s. The Vizi cellar dates back to 1867 and is run by a small family team. The owner Károly (Charles) is a very jovial fellow who really enjoys his winemaking and entertaining guests who visit. He speaks Hungarian, but on the tour the tour guide interprets. Working alongside him is his son-in-law, who we often jokes he is not sure what he fell in love with first, his daughter or making wine! He does the English tours where there is no guide.
This is traditional wine making at its best. Wines are made largely without interference from additives or other mechanical means and are not fined and filtered too heavily which means they retain some residual particles. In my view, they are the better for it! The cellar hosts around 20 people at tables, and there is usually bread and pâté served. It doesn’t get much more atmospheric than this.
One of the great party pieces of a lot of more traditional cellars is drinking wine from the barrel and here is no exception. There are usually four wines served, the last of which involved a trip further down into the cellar where surrounded by barrels and the phenomenal smell of fermenting wines, Károly sucks the wine into a glass instrument from which it is then served direct to the glass. This is true theatre to watch.
The wines here are made with love and represent the style which would have been more traditional in wine making. It is wise not to expect overly processed wines, but rather wines with their own characters and flavours. Whether it is the floral whites, the fruity rosés, or the rich, but light reds, they all have a uniqueness which makes the experience enjoyable. You can’t buy these wines in the local supermarket, the production volumes here are tiny. But you can buy a bottle or two to take away!
| Over the years, I’ve been back to Vizi a number of times and Károly always recognises me and is pleased to see me return. For a man who speaks little English and a man who speaks very little Hungarian, we are united in our love of the art and brilliance of winemaking. Its not hard to see why his son-in-law fell in love with the work, it does have a magical quality to it. |
The highlights here are definitely the fact you are sat in a piece of history and that the Vizi tradition of wine making is honouring the Etyek styles of years gone by. Undoubtedly, the barrel served wine is a great sell for visitors who may not have experienced that before (and those of us who have!). And really I find Károly to be very warm and welcoming. There are also great wines to drink, so its got a lot going for it!
I really like the fact that the pressure to sell out and commercialise hasn’t been so great that Károly has turned this place into a tourist factory. This is a working winery which does tours, not the other way around. There are photos on the wall showing the history of the winery, and the town and that is a great reminder of the tradition which is being honoured here.
I have never quite found the time or courage to try to arrange my own visit, but it is possible to get the bus from Budapest out to Etyek and walk between wineries. The great thing about the City & Wine tour, though is that besides the obvious door to door transport, you get to meet different people on each tour from all over the world, drink great wine together and share the experience. That’s probably why I keep rebooking!
So if you want to visit the Vizi winery, its definitely worth a trip to Etyek. The way the City & Wine tour works is there are multiple wineries, so its not guaranteed you will visit on every tour. So to be absolutely sure, you’d need to arrange you own visit. You can find the winery on facebook – https://www.facebook.com/ViziPinceszet. If you do plan a visit, let Károly know, I recommended them. And in the meantime, keep enjoying this beautiful planet we live on, one glass at a time.