Bóka Birtok

We first met András back in 2022, but weren’t able to visit his estate until just last year. We did however sit and taste a whole lineup near Lake Balaton, and got our first foray into his world of crystals. Deeply moved by the writings of Emoto Masaru, who argues that human vibrations, be they emotions, intent or sound, all change the molecular structure of water. Water receives and responds to this information.

If these vibrations are good, symmetrical crystals form. If they are negative, the molecular structure becomes chaotic, broken, and no crystals form. As András Bóka puts it, "When vibration ceases, life ceases. Wine is organized into an orderly form when it is a living substance. Drinking living wine enlivens and uplifts. This is the only way a crystal is formed.”

By subjecting water to music, prayer, meditation, and by pulling from natural springs versus tainted industrial runoff, Emoto Masaru then froze the water, and using a microscopic camera, documented his findings.

András has done the same with his wines and even labeled a wine with Edvard Munch's Scream painting and another bottle of the same wine with a Claude Monet painting. No crystals for the Norwegian painting, but plenty for Monet.

Maybe this reads to some as pseudoscience. Our argument, without molecular photographic evidence, is that maybe this is akin to the Honeymoon Effect or even the current supply chain. Maybe that cheap rosé you drank gazing at a sunset with somebody you love was in fact just a shit bottle of wine, but the collective good vibrations made it taste amazing on a molecular level.

Wines often taste off and disjointed for the first 3-4 weeks after they arrive into port. Maybe being stuck in that dark container with just the mechanical hum of a massive ship isn’t exactly crystal positive?

Regardless, this notion drives how they work in the vineyards and in the cellar. If structure is life affirming, then why destroy it with additives and filtering? This is the guiding light of their natural wine philosophy. They also have lineage in this area as well. Their family first purchased 5 hectares in 1903 and even ran their own pub and guest rooms through the 20s and 30s. After WWII, they were reduced to just .3 hectares. Like countless others, it was simply taken away by the state. The official restart didn’t happen until 2012 when András, his wife and children, grandmother, and brother Zoltán decided to bring it back to life. After a 15 year learning curve, the first commercial vintage was 2020.

And while they do grow a range or grapes like Kékfrankos, Zenit, Királyelányka, Rieslingssilvani, Chardonnay, Olaszrizling, Merlot, and Szürkebarát, Kadarka is foundational and accounts for around 75% of their total production.

This clone came out of the University of Pécs in the 1960s during the COOP era. Despite smelling amazing when it was successfully harvested, it was a failure for industrial winemaking. In addition to disease, it fell apart with mechanical harvesters as well. Even András admits that over a 15 year period they had 3-4 100% healthy picks. That said, they love it and started to train it higher (140cm), better farming led to more nitrogen and looser clusters, and given its uneven ripening, has killer acidity which is ideal for rosé and sparkling.

The Jakab, or Olasz Kadarka has much thicker skins, darker fruit, homogenous ripening, is far less disease prone, and is ideal for pushing ripeness. Their grandfather also had some planted back in the 1960s before P9 was introduced. When we first tasted the 2020, 2021, and 2022, additional layers of the Kadarka onion were peeled back. We’ve tasted many other clones like P111, P123, P115, P131, P147, and the older 1880 and 1912 plantings from Maurer just to name a few, but this is something very different and exciting.