Our Newsletters
Don't Harsh My Pomalo
We are starting with a major downer, but then it gets better. It will be a quick turnaround in the same vein as Monty Python’s she turned me into a newt!...I got better kind of way.
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The Second Cheapest Wine
Everything is too expensive and we don’t like it. It’s not good for business nor is it good for the culture of wine that brought us to this low-margin-even-during-the-good-times-business in the first…
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A River Barely Runs Through It
The wine business of late has turned us into “apocaloptimists.” We can clearly see the current situation as grim but we have an active and persistent hope for the future.
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Go Juhfark yourself, San Diego
Drinking Juhfark feels like you’re getting too many essential and rare minerals into your body. You can almost feel the kidney stone making its long journey from the bottle to your urethra.
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PEZgő
PEZ candy was created in 1927 in Vienna as a breath mint to get people to quit smoking.
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Péter and the Wolf
We arrived in Central Europe just a couple of days after the historic election of Péter Magyar in Hungary.
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Once, Twice, Three Times a (primary) Fermentation
In the interest of making a deeply dated reference to a 1978 Commodores hit, I can’t count how many times I’ve finished someone else’s listing of three things with, “three times...a lady.” If you…
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Mátras de Chai
When you walk the wine aisles at large discount chains and big box stores in Hungary like Lidl, Aldi, Tesco or Spar, you’ll see the fresh aromatic whites from the Mátra Appellation showing up in…
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Slov Down
The importance of gathering in an increasingly disconnected world is a recurring and necessary trope these days.
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Furmint on the Mount
As we’ve written about before, we’re fairly certain that Furmint is horribly suited to be a global brand like Cabernet or Chardonnay. For one, there’s only around 5000 hectares under vine worldwide.
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A River Runs Through It
In the ocean of futility that is the wine business, very few things are as frustrating as trying to paint the full experience of drinking a wine at its origin without resorting to box checking or…
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The Bükk of Life
Norbi runs on what we can only assume is a small fusion reactor. We’ve hit the road for weeks on end with next to zero sleep and never seen him yawn, so no to a bite or a sip, or remotely hesitate to…
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Don't Bogart my Bogrács, man
We’ve been working with Jáni and Krisztián since their 2011 vintage. We’ve gone from barely fitting shoulder to shoulder in their first cellar to being able to rent out guest rooms and host large…
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Wine Street
With such an overabundance of market certainty (kidding) coupled with tariffs, labor, cost of living, inflation abroad, a weak dollar, and ever increasing logistical costs at home, this is the first…
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Footloess
In 1984 Hungary was still firmly under Communist rule. Along with the rest of the Eastern Bloc, they also boycotted the Los Angeles Summer Olympics of the same year.
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Wet Hot Balkan Summer
The kids are out of school, the 4th has come and gone, and much like the campers and counselors from the 2001 movie classic, we now have an entire summer to really focus on our personal dramas,…
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Journey to the Center of the Europe
We’ve just returned from visiting three countries and 26 producers. In many ways we entered through a volcano and explored a very different wine world in a way we hope Jules Verne would appreciate.
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Schengenigans!
Schengenigans? Who said Schengenigans? Back in January Romania officially became the 29th country to join the Schengen zone.
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Video Killed the Radio Free Europe Star
t doesn’t make our news that often or ever, but countries like Hungary, Poland, Romania, Georgia, Slovakia, and Serbia are currently experiencing some of the largest protests since the Cold War.
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Prunetheus
Looking back at my trip notes from our last visit, the first line reads, “and now he’s growing sapling trees alongside baby vines and he’s stopped pruning.
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Cow-culus
Given the constant flux of chaos over the past few weeks, be it fires in Los Angeles, politics, or any of a number of choose your own adventures, we are feeling the need to breathe some new life into…
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Let us be Crystal Clear
Sometimes you find yourself in a small village in southwestern Hungary talking about the vibrational memory of water pioneered by a Japanese writer and how a true wine of harmony forms hexagonal…
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Appetite for Degustation
A frequent rant loosely disguised as a desperate plea to buy wine from Central and Eastern Europe is a call to break our food routines and armchair travel a bit.
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Charlamagne tha Wine God
Between 748 and 814, Charlemagne was known for a great number of things that we are not going to have time to cover here.
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Iron Efficiency
The small city of Mohács is a lot of Hungary all rolled into one. It’s the site of the battle that effectively ended the independent rule of Hungary in 1526 when the Ottomans killed King Louis II in…
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Schöckl and Awe
With Styria’s Schöckl Mountain and the iconic Riegersburg Castle both in view from the southern facing slopes of the vibrant Buchertberg vineyard, this quiet moment standing in the green heart of…
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The Brutler Did It
Common headstone epitaphs in the United States are usually “rest in peace,” “in loving memory,” “gone but not forgotten” and so on.
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Rékauiem for a Dream
If there’s something many if not all of our producers would agree with, is that they’ve all gone too far to turn back.
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Eat, Pray, Import
We’ve recently returned from visiting 18 producers in four countries plus ending at two massive wine fairs where another dozen or so were pouring and another handful were visiting on their own…
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Playing Musical Črnko(s)
Playing musical chairs is an increasingly intense mixture of quick problem solving, listening, mild physical abuse, and ultimately play.
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Bohemia Rhapsody
From the iconic Muppets version, Wayne’s World for anyone of age in the early 1990s, and the countless times it’s been on the radio, it never really occurred to me what Queen thought of “Bohemian…
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A Doctor Recommended Kolonicsoscopy
While perhaps not as evasive, these wines will make it to your small and potentially large intestine at some point.
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Furmint Horizon
After doing at least 3 minutes of research about what an Event Horizon is in terms of a potential pun title for this newsletter, it turns out to be quite fitting.
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We’ll talk, no big whoop
Trying to strike a delicate but firm tone with this one. Definitely a little pubescent slamming of the bedroom door, crying into a pillow, and playing dramatic music at full volume, but also getting…
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I got 99 problems, but a Batič ain't one
Despite knowing Miha Batič [Baht-itch] for over a decade, there are moments where schizophrenia seems like the most appropriate diagnosis.
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You gonna burn, burn, burn, burn, burn it to the wick. Oh, Barra-Barakonyi…
Even though “Barracuda” was written as a rage fueled revenge song, apart from our feeling towards wine buyers (kidding), it’s now become more or less a timeless rock classic.
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I've got my pride, I drink my wine. My Name is Mud
Timely Primus references aside, the village name of Blato does literally translate to “mud.” A massive field near the town used to regularly flood.
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Blue-Plate Sefu
We royally screwed up trying to visit the Brutler family this past May. Coming from Hungary we didn’t realize certain driver’s license laws had changed in the past few months and we could not take…
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The Karner-vore Diet
The carnivore diet is essentially a marketing pitch hinging on beliefs and convictions that are pseudoscientific at best.
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The Abeles-tion of Man
Born and raised along Lake Balaton, Imre Halász has had quite a number of past lives.
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Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours…The Kasnyik Club.
For the past three years Kasnyik has felt like the Breakfast Club trope of claiming to have a girlfriend, but she’s in Canada.
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Zoltáns of Swing
A number of years ago I had the opportunity to meet Warren Winiarski. Founder of Stags’ Leap Winery, won the best Cabernet at the 1976 Judgment of Paris, conservationist, philanthropist and the list…
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I'm going going, back back, to Káli Káli
The Northern Shore of Lake Balaton is often a tug of war between overdeveloped summer resort towns and some of Hungary’s most compelling wine country.
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We Bott A Zoo
This marks our 12th vintage working with Judit and Józsi’s wines. Why they haven’t dropped us yet is even more shocking.
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PIWI’s Big Adventure
We ended up with a little extra time in our schedule in the Maribor region of northeastern Slovenia on our Spring 2022 trip.
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Rakija me like a Hurricane
Not having a fruit distillate in the portfolio has been a clear dereliction of duty.
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What Would Brian Botrytis Do?
Writing about botrytized wines in December is about as lazy and predictable as writing about the virtues of drinking Champagne beyond the realm of special occasions or not all Riesling is sweet.
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Treasure of the Somló Madre
For most winemakers on Somló, water is either rainwater catch, a rare access to a well, or pulling from the small local Séd Spring on either side of the extinct volcano.
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Romancing the Ston
Anyone who doesn’t smile ear to ear after eating oysters from Ston is dead inside. Some are still using 100+ year old wooden lattices and techniques from the Kingdom of Dubrovnik.
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Homoky-stroika
When Mikhail Gorbachev died on August 30th, we went down a deep Soviet rabbit hole learning about his life, doctrines, successes, failures, and even listened to his 2009 musical debut entitled The…
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Tinon The Librarian
I recently asked Samuel Tinon about how he feels about the last 30 odd years in Tokaj. With zero delay he replied, “Now I’m 50. I was 20. Same feeling.
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The Karlovci Kid
We landed in Belgrade around 2pm and by 2:30 we were surrounded by at least 20 bottles of Rakia and enough cured meat to choke a donkey.
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The Adventures of Barta Munchausen
One of the taglines for the 1988 Terry Gilliam version of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was “Adventure, Comedy, Romance.
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Vrhtigo
Jet-lagged, clay caking on my boots á la mafia cement shoes, feeling deeply malnourished due to a 100% cured meat diet, and desperately searching for some wild asparagus to offset my gut health, I…
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Losoncing my Religion
In preparation for this nearly two week late newsletter, see also grasping for straws, I was able to have a long overdue 2 hour+ ZOOM with Bálint Losonci. Turns out we had a lot to cover.
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Mátra Libre
One of my favorite Hungarian colloquialisms is, “Sírva vigad a Magyar.” This more or less translates to a Hungarian is only happy when they are miserable.
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Das Leben der Andert
Much like a Stasi officer secretly listening in and becoming emotionally consumed by the conversations of playwrights in Das Leben Der Anderen, fueled by two and half years of no travel, I’ve been…
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She’s Grál That
Every newsletter is a struggle, but January is particularly rough. My first attempt at grasping for straws was describing New Year's traditions in Central Europe.
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Giving Somló a Launching Árpád for Something New
Perhaps due to exhaustion, barely keeping up with existing partnerships abroad, and not being able to travel since forever, we haven’t really explored beyond our existing producers on Somló for a…
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Somló Like it Hot
Due to Hungary’s Land Reform Bill of 1945, thousands of families were given vineyard land previously owned by the Church and the aristocracy.
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Can I Kikelet? Yes you can!
Like so many wine terms, I get lazy with being specific. Acidity is certainly one of them.
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Bačka to the Future
The more we work with Maurer, the more we feel like we’re sawing off the tree limb we’re standing on. His ultimate goal is to sell all the wines locally.
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When They Go Low, We Go Hajós
In my darker moments, I wonder if I can crack the calm, sincere, and loving veneer of the Sziegl family.
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Válihalla
At, and always at, the expense of a pun, the title isn’t actually too far from the reality at Válibor.
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Smokvica ‘Em If You Got Em
Croatia, easily the most touristed of any country we work with, has had very little incentive to change the status quo in terms of wine and food.
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All Bets are Herrenhof
As a part of my due diligence before meeting Gottfried for the first time back in 2018, I stumbled upon some older Youtube clips he had posted.
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The Law of Kasnyik and Effect
Less than a two hours drive northwest of Budapest and only 20 minutes northwest of Bott Frigyes you’ll arrive in the village of Strekov.
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Oppan Garam Style
The front label of the 2019 Olaszrizling pretty much sums it up. It would be a single guess Pictionary drawing for Bott Frigyes. It also describes exactly how I first came to visit them.
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I am Iron Gate Man
This is a COVID time capsule on the importing front. Vaskapu Kastély (Iron Gate Castle) was on my Spring 2020 itinerary that was never to be.
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Beltiug! Beltiug! Beltiug!
Transylvania has always been a bit of white whale for us. I don’t think you can get further away from what we think of as Europe while still being in Europe.
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Chim chiminey Chim chim cher-ee. A sweep is as lucky as lucky can be
In between evacuations, mass destruction, virus and smoke ridden air, and a litany of other tragedies, there were still harvest photos like this.
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Wetzer Side Story
Much like the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, Péter Wetzer is a Tony like figure caught in between the extremes of the natural wine spectrum.
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ANDERT ALS DIE ANDERN
Nothing hooks a wine buyer like a German play-on-words referencing an Austrian winery, the Weimar Republic, a compassionate look at homosexuality in cinema, and said film being later burned by the…
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I wish I were an Oszkár Maurer Winery
There’s exponential change happening right now in the Central and Eastern European wine scene. Serbia is no exception.
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The Bearded Daddy of the Mátra Mountains
During the 1980s, Mátra produced over 40% of Hungary’s wine exports — cheap industrial table wines.
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Lock, Štoka and Two Smoking Barrels. New arrivals from the Kras, Slovenia
Every newsletter is now more or less based on where I would have visited in the past few months if not for current circumstances.
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By the Power of Grayskull! New “Hei-mann” (& Fiai) Arrivals
The Heimann family has been seeking out the best clones of Kadarka and where to plant them for the past 25 years.
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Pošip Comes to Shove…
One of my perennial favorites are the Pošips from The Toreta Winery on the Island of Korčula, Croatia.
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The Covidsation
A mere month ago I was looking forward to therapeutically ranting about how Piquentum’s last vintage was accidentally frozen and destroyed inside the container last Spring.
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Enter Sandman (and a woman): New Arrivals from Petra and Balázs Sziegl and Oszkár Maurer
The largest wine region in Hungary is the Duna and includes the Hajós-Baja, Csongrád and Kunság appellations. It covers most of the area south of Budapest and in between the Danube and Tisza Rivers.
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These are a few of my favorite wines…
Visiting Geyerhof and having them entrust me with their wines often makes me feel like they can’t possibly know who I really am.
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A Terrific 2019 and a potentially Tariffic 2020
Since starting this new venture last July and helping Blue Danube wind down into retirement, we would like to thank you for all of the support and risk taking that’s involved in working with a…
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“We are not normal.” – Judit Bodó
The first winery I ever represented from Tokaj was Bott Pince. 11 vintages later, a relationship built in both Hungary and California, and having witnessed both our families and businesses grow, it’s…
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KEEP Fall Release - Vermentino, Albariño, Syrah & Carignane
If memory and searching Gmail serves, I first met Johanna and Jack back in 2013 when I would attempt to sell Central European wines in wine country but undoubtedly have extra wine by day’s end.
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An Outlier in the Vulkanland: Herrenhof Lamprecht
About an hour West of the Hungarian border and 2 hours south of Vienna you’ll find 9 hectares sloping down between fruit orchards planted to Adelfränkisch, Affenthaler, Augster Gelber, Auxerrois,…
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From (just West of) Russia with Love
New arrivals from Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia & Austria This container has been a long time coming and only the second under the Danch & Granger label.
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Not Now Cato! New Balkan Arrivals
After an extremely long and tragedy ridden dry spell, we are finally delving back into the Balkans.
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Sweet heaven, I'm in Love Again
As a semi desperate reach aimed at introducing some new Tokaj wines in the context of the 4th of July, there is a Thomas Jefferson connection.
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