2024 Bakator Pét Nat

When Maurer first started making wine from this grape he joked that “I make the best and the worst Bakator” in that no one else was making any post phylloxera at the time. Add to this that his is own-rooted, bush trained, and planted in 1909. Apparently there are 3 Bakator grapes: red, white and blue. To make things easy, they are not genetically related, although they share some flavor profiles here and there when macerated. The white (Fehér) is often planted as a stamen to pollinate the red is another connection. You can find some red (Piros) Bakator along Lake Balaton, but we’ve not encountered the white. According to Oszkár, there’s only one other winery in Ukraine (Transcarpathia area) with the white Bakator as well. Picked from unpruned vines with a range of ripeness before being susceptible to botrytis, it was then partially fermented before being aged for 18 months in the bottle on the fine lees. When you first smell it, there’s also another undeniable flavor. He did sneak in some citra hops which were then, along with the lees, disgorged before bottling. This is a super limited, but a rare glimpse of a nearly forgotten grape with a Maurer twist. Remarkably refreshing and fun to drink.