Part 4 of 5

Chapter 4, Sirens Valley

After lunch we successfully found the car. I had left in the care of a Gypsy man, I think his name was Zsolt. I had given him 440 huf for the parking lot and a 100 huf tip. This allowed me to park in his lot until 8 am on Friday the following week, something was lost in translation here We then drove the short distance to Szepasszony-volgy or Sirens Valley. This compact little valley is home of the world famous Egri Bikaver, Bull’s Blood, wine. A rich and fruity dry red wine that has been made in this area for over 150 years. We walked thru the collection of small cellers, about 40 in total, all numbered to easily differentiate between them as all of the names are confusingly similar, this eases the sampling and rating. Some of the cellars are more commercial than others, some were selling food and beer, most appear to be small family operations. We saw one guy sitting at a table applying the labels to his wine bottles while another man sat and chopped vegetables. Our favorite was cellar number 23 owned by 76 year old Zsolt. He was a big fan of Ronald Regan, one of his cousins from somewhere was a member of some delegation about something and he met Regan. He gladly gave us a tour of his cellar, provided unlimited tastings and told us about his 15 hectares of grapes. His best year was 2000 and the wine he produced, a Kekfrankos, or Blue Frankish, won many awards. The moldy awards were proudly displayed on the walls of the dimly lit musty cellar. He kept a concise guest book and shared it with us. His cellar seemed to be a favorite of the older locals, they were sitting on the deck in front of his cellar enjoying a bottle of wine. Most of the other cellers were populated by tourist types. The wooden barrels were great for show but my feeling was they hadn’t been used for many years. We bought a 1.5L plastic bottle of his wine for 500 huf and we have enjoyed it.