The Budaházy Fekete Mansion, the estate centre in the heart of Erdőbénye, was built in 1650. The family restored the building from 1996 and founded the winery in 2012. Throughout the realisation of the family’s dreams, sustainability and respect for nature have always been focal points, so from the very beginning we have cultivated our vineyards organically and made our wines without additives. The winery has been officially organically certified since 2018. In 2020 we opened our mansion patio restaurant Kúria Bisztró, where we serve dishes created from natural local ingredients to accompany the superb Erdőbénye wines. The essence of our plant protection is that a healthy, well-nourished plant can protect itself, and thus problems caused by infection can be avoided. The plant’s stomach is the soil, so our main task is to make the nutrients existing in the earth accessible to the plants, to keep the plant root system healthy and to get rid of pests using hyperparasitic fungus (Trichoderma asperellum, Beauveria bassiana). We are constantly observing the vine, “asking” it what it needs through leaf and root tests, and thus we are able to prevent development nutrient deficiencies or the upset of the micro and macro element balance. In addition, we use soil-improving minerals leonardite (dudarite), zeolite and alginate, which we also apply on the leaf at 2-100um for the beneficial effects which include providing the vine’s trace element requirements and inhibiting the spread of undesired insects and fungus. Using these various methods at the appropriate frequency/timing based on constant vineyard observation we are generally able to protect our vines.
Main aim: to achieve – with minimal intervention – for the vine to “become self-sustaining” by restoring the ancient soil flora and fauna by adding balanced nutrients and organic matter.
Harvest time is chosen carefully, and the hand-picked grapes are brought in small boxes into the winery for processing. We ensure the grape temperature is suitable (max. 18 C°), cool the berries if necessary, and sort each bunch by hand to remove any bits of stalk and leaf so only totally healthy grapes enter the press. We press the whole bunch with the cooling jacket of the press, keeping the mash at a constant temperature of 16-18 C° using inert gas without oxygen. After 24 hours of settling, the must is moved to either tank or barrel (depending on method chosen), where it undergoes controlled fermentation.
Our main winemaking aim is to preserve the character and fruitiness of the grape variety. Most of our wines ferment and age in tanks in completely reductive conditions. This is always the base of the finished wine, and we blend it with wines aged, and sometimes fermented too, in 220-l local Zemplén oak Szerednyei barrels. Thus we have an extremely complex mouth while in the nose there are still youthful notes of reductive freshness. We aim to bring to consumers our wines in their most natural form. using the least intervention. In practice this means we avoid chemicals that “can smooth out” the wine in order to make it drinkable as soon as possible. We see the answer in bottle aging in the cellar, so our wines go through their natural development and appear in their natural beauty, in their own time, in the glass.
