István Jásdi or the power of self

„Wine competitions are OK (when properly organised) but winery visits are the thing to do. Wine invariably tastes better and more complex when tasted in situ. There’s nothing better to deeply understand a wine, or a wine region, than to visit a winery.Our happy bunch of jurors went to visit the current president of Hungarian vintners, István Jásdi, a former CEO who acquired this 18-hectare estate on the Balaton lake in 2002.

I’ve followed these wines from the beginning and they immediately set a new standard for Balaton wines. Typically these are light holiday wines with little substance. Jásdi showed that they can be structured, potent, mineral, ageworthy white wines. And the Olaszrizling grape really owes a lot to Jásdi who again showed that rather than being a rustic overcropped junkie, it could rival German Riesling as a terroir-expressive mineral wine. One part of Jásdi’s work has been selecting the best parcels on the Balaton to make cru wines. The geology here is very varied, and the adjacent Lőczedombi and Siralomvágó vineyards have very opposite soil types: pink water-retaining sandstone and well-drained limestone rocks, respectively. Olaszrizling from the former is finer, leaner, more mineral-driven while the latter gives a more fiery, textured wine.”