For those who follow the history of Hungarian wine, the name of the Hernyák family must surely sound familiar. In 1993, they started with the traditions they brought from Vojvodina and with their first 100 litres of pálinka. Today, they are one of the leading names of the Etyek traditional method sparkling wine scene. Their seven hectares of organically cultivated grapes grow in the Tóra, the Sánc and the Báthori vineyards, and around the press house on Öreghegy, they have a neat estate with copper stills, a distillery and cozy spaces. We sat down there in March to taste the estate's current sparkling wines, out of which we picked two for the summer.

Today, two generations work together on the estate, where the ‘initial pasta-filtering’ artisanal solutions have now been replaced by much more professional technology. "Our common dream was to create a self-sustaining farm, where WiFi and ladybugs, pneumatic presses and manual plunging, climate-controlled tractors and hoes coexist and even help each other." Hernyák sparkling wine was first made from the 2010 vintage, and since then, every step, from viticulture to finishing, has been carried out in-house.

“For the rosé, we try to select the more intense, fruitier base wines from the three varieties,” says Tomi Hernyák, who set the colour of this traditional method sparkling wine by adding nearly 10% of Pinot Noir red wine to the blend. Compared to what is typical in Champagne, this is quite a large proportion, so in addition to the colour, it also adds to the overall picture of the nose and the palate. It’s an excellent partner of the Brut: it’s based more on fruit and freshness, it is vibrant, lively and thirst-quenching.