The Vida Winery in Szekszárd has launched a new red blend named after the wine region’s principal soil type, loess, which they feel has a great influence on the wine style.
Peter Vida Jr presented the wine in Budapest last week, explaining how loess was an important soil in many prominent wine regions around the world, such as Central Otago in New Zealand, various regions along the Rhine in Germany and the Danube in Austria, and of course, here in Hungary, in Szekszárd.
The Vidas have always strived to produce elegant, approachable wines, and Peter points out that loess always produces round tannins and acidity, lovely fruit and floral aromas, and, above all elegance. Their goal is to show this to the world. To show what Szekszárd is all about – authentic expressions of its diverse valleys and its loess soils.
The release of this new red blend follows on from their successful image revamp of last year, which Peter remarks actually led to a 20% increase in sales. With the image change came new labels which no longer emphasised Vida as a producer, but rather the origin of the wines, Szekszárd and its individual valleys. So, the choice of name, ’lösz’ is simply a continuation of this desire to highlight their wines’ terroir, rather than their hand in the winemaking.
Lösz, like their other premium wines, is aimed at restaurants and wine merchants, and they hope it will fill the gap between the Szekszárd trio of Kadarka, Kékfrankos and Bikavér and their flagship La Vida, and encourage people to trade up slightly to this classy new blend.
The 2017 Lösz is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc, Kékfrankos, Merlot, Syrah and Carmenere, originating from their Barany-völgy, Hidaspetre and Virág-hegy vineyards. It’s smooth and elegant on the palate with fine, ripe tannins and intense flavours of plum, cherry and spice as well as a long finish. As the aim here is to best showcase the loess soils, the blend will change each year depending on what is best felt to highlight its characteristics.
Budapest Wine Snob 