Our wine today is Béres Lőcse Furmint 2017 from Tokaj. It is a great wine, has a story and available in several countries. We will explain what the wine is made of and how, why do we suggest it, what to pair with, where you can buy for how much, and we also tell you more about Lőcse vineyard.

How to pronounce Béres Lőcse Furmint

What
100% Furmint, a single vineyard wine from the best crop of Lőcse vineyard. To read about the vineyard, scroll down.

How
After very gentle pressing the must had a rest for a night then fermentation took place in wooden barrel. After fermentation the wine aged in large barrels (2 and 5 hL) with different levels of toasting. Due to bâtonnage during the ageing period, this Furmint became a round, balanced wine reflecting the mineral characteristics of the vineyard. “After ageing we tasted every single barrel and blended the best ones to create the final wine”.

Why
Tamlyn Currin, wine writer of Jancis.Robinson.com tasted this wine and gave 17 points. “Classic Furmint nose! The smell of pure Furmint always seems, to me, to have a lime-green luminosity to it! Heady florals that tumble from nose to palate. Nectarines, tangerine and exploding sweet lime and the locust-tree/acacia-blossom sweetness. The oak is but a whisper, bringing a pencil-tip-fine stipple of spice, more felt than tasted. Towards the finish, elegant richness builds: creamy warm almonds, even a touch of orange marmalade. Long. Superb.“

What to pair with
Due to its complexity this Furmint pairs well with elaborate plates of poultry, fish or pork tenderloin. If there is a creamy sauce, the acidity (6.2 g/L) of the wine will balance it nicely.

Where and how much
– The new official Béres website with a webshop is available in Hungarian at the moment, the price is 4792 HUF (11–12 euro)
– You can also order Béres Lőcse Furmint from Winelovers Webshop. They ship to every European country! The price is 13 euro here.

More about Béres Vineyards on Hungarianwines.eu
The English version of Béres official website is under construction.

Lőcse – a legendary vineyard

Size of the vineyard

Lőcse vineyard is the most important “cru” of Béres Vineyards. The size is 15 hectares – out of the total 45 hectares of the estate. When Béres Vineyards was lauched, they had only 10 hectares right next to the estate building, the first wines in 2003 all came from here. Now the team calls this original parcel “The Old Lőcse”, because later, in 2005 they could purchase an abandoned parcel lying above the old one, planted new vines – so this part is “The New Lőcse”. Since then “The Old Lőcse” has been renewed as well, thus now Lőcse is a modern vineyard with 5000 vines / hectare.

The origin of Lőcse name

Béres family has always been keen on the history of the estate, and thanks to historian friend Kornél Nagy they learnt that the first written mention of Lőcse vineyard had mentioned a certain Gotki as the owner. In a document from 1507 it turns out that Gotki left the vineyard on the church of Lehnice and thus afterwards the vineyard was named after him. Gotki was originally from the town of Lőcse (or Levoča, now a town of Slovakia). Later the vineyard has several owners, even György I. Rákóczy, Prince of Transylvania managed to aquire it. Yet, the name comes from the hometown of Gotki, the first known owner.
Béres family contacted the town management of Lőcse to maintain the relationship and they also placed some wine in the cellar of the town house – certainly from grapes of Lőcse vineyard.

The soil – a geological journey

The base soil is rhyolite tuff up to the depth of 100 metres. Above the rhyolite subsoil vine cultivation takes place on clay regolith. Due to the high clay content, the soil retains rainwater, however the flowing rainwater on the steep side of the mountain results serious erosion of the soil.
A walk in Lőcse vineyard is an experience of geology: besides the rhyolite tuff pieces we can discover lava stone remaingings, pumice, obsidian, hornestone, opal and other minerals.
In 2018 Béres Vineyards inaugurated an educational path in Lőcse vineyard – it is more than worth visiting it!