2016 Balla Géza Furmint Stone Wine

Community Tasting Notes (3) Avg Score: 85 points

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  11/11/2021 - forceberry wrote: 88 Points

  The wine is labeled "Sziklabor", which translates to "Stone Wine", so I guess this is a label for the domestic market. 100% Furmint from Öreg-dűlő ("old vineyard"), fermented spontaneously and aged for 6-8 months in old 500-liter Hungarian oak casks. 14,5% alcohol. Tasted blind.
  
  Intense and quite youthful yellow-green color. Rich, intense and quite powerful nose of peanuts and nut coat, along with honeyed sweetness, some floral notes of honeysuckle, light zesty notes of citrus fruits, a little bit ripe nectarine and a woolly hint of lanolin. The wine is broad, ripe and moderately full-bodied on the palate with an intensely nutty streak of peanut in the taste, followed by concentrated flavors of juicy apple, some clover honey tones, a little bit of stony minerality, light floral notes of honeysuckle and a woolly hint of lanolin. The moderately high acidity lends good sense of balance to the wine, while the rather high alcohol brings some obvious heat to the palate. The long finish is ripe and broad with dry, fresh flavors of juicy yellow fruits, chopped peanuts, some crunchy golden apples, light floral notes of honeysuckle, a little bit of stony minerality and a woolly hint of lanolin.
  
  A good but somewhat weird Romanian white - I've had some very nutty wines, but never before I've had a wine that both smells and tastes exactly like chopped peanuts and even that brown peanut seed coat. From the fruit flavors, quite high acidity and quite noticeable woolly notes I guessed immediately that this was an Hungarian Furmint, most likely from Sómlo. Well, it turned out that although my guess was incorrect, I was surprisingly close: although Romanian, Géza Balla is an ethnic Hungarian, considered to be one of the best Hungarian winemakers (actually being the first non-Hungarian to be named the Hungarian winemaker of the year) and the Miniş (or Menes) region in Transilvania, western Romania, has strong cultural ties to Hungary, which lies just across the border. All in all, pretty good stuff, but due to the intensely nutty flavors, this is more of an academic curiosity than a wine of true pleasure. A wine of distinction, if anything.

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  3/10/2020 - asgerG wrote: 82 Points

  Seems a bit oxidized. Lost the zesty character.

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  10/20/2017 - henrygjeffreys Likes this wine:

  saline nose with some notes of ginger and marzipan
  Creamy texture, spicy, lemony fruit and a sort of lemon/ orange skin bitterness at the end. Quite long. Perhaps a little lacking in the middle but for 6 euros this is pretty good

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