The most important things to know about winemaking and wine culture, before and after a tasting.
35 results
The same grape can yield a fresh wine or a barrel-aged one. Three decisions shape the style: whether it ferments on the skins, how much oxygen it gets, and what remains or forms in it.
Reductive winemaking excludes oxygen; oxidative winemaking lets it in deliberately. This gives the fresh, fruity character or the nutty, honeyed, deep one.
Cool harvest, fast processing, cooled fermentation in a stainless-steel tank: this is how white wine keeps the grape's fresh, fruity aromas.
Barrel fermentation, lees ageing and malolactic conversion together give a full, round, creamy white wine its character.
There are wines that are deliberately left in contact with air. Here the oxidative character is not a fault but the essence of the style.
Orange wine is made from white grapes, but with the red-wine method: it ferments together with the skins for days, even months. The result is an amber-coloured, tannic wine reminiscent of dried fruit.
The colour, tannin and structure of red wine come from the skins. The key is maceration: how long and how the juice is in contact with the skins.
Whole bunches are put into a tank saturated with carbon dioxide, and fermentation begins inside each berry. The result is a purple-red, very fruity red wine with little tannin.
The crushed grapes are heated for a short time to 60–80 °C, so the colour dissolves quickly out of the skins. The wine is colourful and soft, but less suitable for ageing.
Rosé is made from blue grapes, and gets its pale colour from short contact with the skins. There are three main methods: direct pressing, short skin maceration and saignée.
Direct-press rosé is pale, dry, citrusy and mineral. Short skin maceration produces a rosé with deeper colour and more fruit.
In saignée, a part of the must is bled off at the beginning of the red wine's fermentation. The drained juice makes a darker, fuller rosé, while the red wine becomes more concentrated.
The shared secret of sparkling wines is that the wine ferments in a closed space under pressure, and the carbon dioxide stays dissolved in it. The difference is where: in the bottle or in a tank.
In the traditional (Champagne) method, secondary fermentation and maturing take place in the bottle. The transfer method is a faster variant of it.
In the tank methods the bubbles form in a pressure tank. The Charmat method gives a fresh, fruity sparkling wine, the Asti method a sweet, Muscat-scented one.
Pét-nat is the oldest sparkling-wine method: the base wine is bottled before the end of the first fermentation, so the bubbles are completed in the bottle. It is often cloudy, yeasty and raw in character.
The shared secret of sweet wines is that the sugar content of the grape berry becomes concentrated before or after harvest. This can happen through noble rot, shrivelling, freezing or drying.
Tokaji aszú is made from noble-rotted grapes; its main varieties are Furmint, Hárslevelű and Sárga Muskotály. Today every aszú must contain at least 120 g/l of residual sugar.
Eszencia is the extremely thick juice that drips from the aszú berries under their own weight. Its sugar content is at least 450 g/l, it ferments slowly over years, and its alcohol content is only a few percent.
Szamorodni is made from bunches picked without selection, together with the noble-rotted berries. It can be sweet or dry, depending on how many aszú berries went into it.
Late-harvest wine is made from shrivelled or noble-rotted grapes, ice wine from frozen grapes. The former can range from off-dry to sweet; ice wine is pure, acidic and concentrated.
Straw wine is made from beautiful, healthy bunches that are dried on straw or racks for weeks or months. The wine ends up with honey, nut and dried-fruit flavours.
The sweetness of a wine is determined by the amount of residual sugar (g/l). Still wines are classed as dry, off-dry, medium-sweet and sweet, and sparkling wines from brut nature to doux.
The most important wine styles on one page: which techniques they are made with, what flavour profile they give, and which sugar category they typically fall into.
Short answers to the most common questions: reductive and oxidative, orange wine, rosé, sparkling wine and pét-nat, brut and demi-sec, puttonyos and eszencia.
Wine judging is not a simple matter of taste but a methodical assessment bound by conditions. Who judges, under what circumstances, in what order are the wines served, and how are they scored?
Pictograms of the aroma groups and what they contain, for the wine tasting sheet.
Kortyoló's own sheet, from appearance to evaluation, in printable form.
A genuinely Hungarian variety from the Great Plain, with a green-herb character and a honeyed finish.
From the kisfröccs to the Krúdy spritzer: 19 ratios, and the legend of Ányos Jedlik.
Which wine suits which cheese, from fresh curd cheese to blue-veined cheeses.
Opening, decanting, serving – and the ten commandments of wine drinkers.
Planting, berry thinning, harvest: the grape's journey from vine to press.
Barrique, gönci, ászokhordó: how big, what they are made of, and what the wood gives the wine.
White, rosé and red: when the juice is separated from the skins, and what the steel tank or oak barrel adds.
