Our appointment calendar listed today’s tasting as VEGA SICILIA, certainly one of the most coveted wines in the world, and certainly the pinnacle of possibility from Ribera del Duero, in Spain. Such a promise would tempt even the most reclusive wine writer into the light, and so I must confess I was a little disappointed when we arrived at Sergio Valente’s tasting in the Meridien Hotel, along with a hundred or so other wine folk from Taiwan, to discover that we were not going to taste any Vega Sicilia, ‘only’ wines from four other estates also owned by the Alvarez family. Sorry, no UNICO today, but after that small surprise, all the other surprises of the afternoon were very pleasant.

Sergio Valente puts on a first-class show, and after photographs all round with the main presenter, Ignacio de Saralegui, we sat down to listen to Ignatio hold forth, with Samantha Hourng translating, and taste the benchmark dry Furmint from Oremos. I have always known that Oremos was one of the very first commercial wine producers to venture into Hungary after the collapse of the communist monopoly, but I only learned today how wonderfully brave was this maneuver by the Alvarez family, already a pioneer with Vega Sicilia in Spain’s Ribera del Duero, even before it became a DO (Denominación de Origen) under Spanish wine law.

Though they fell into a slump after the 2nd world war, for many hundreds of years before, the world’s finest sweet wines came from producers of Tokaji around the town of Mad in northern Hungary. The entire town sits atop an endless warren of wine caves encrusted with nitre and crammed with half bottles of sweet Tokaji. Long aging and the mystery of “Noble Rot” (Botrytis cinerea) gives Tokaji its amazing mouth-filling character, and unique techniques of winemaking preserve a bright acidity to yield startling intensity, balancing sweetness derived from seemingly rotten Aszu grapes (unlike often bland expressions from other regions, which are merely sweet).

Pedro Alvarez, the owner of Vega Sicilia must have been almost the first to venture into this ancient but newly reborn wine region in 1993, and he showed even greater foresight when he decided to produce and export a dry white wine made from Hungary’s signature white grape, Furmint. This table wine we tasted first today – Mandolás Dry Furmint. This wine was offered first in the year 2000, but now of course dry Furmint is a staple export from many producers in Hungary.

Oremos was the very first Hungarian producer to export a dry white wine made from Furmint grapes.

The Mandolás came on with a strong impression of ripe apricots as the fruit is tempered by aging (50%) in French barriques. Despite this oak and a full treatment of MLF, this wine retains the remarkable freshness characteristic of all the white wines from Tokaji.

Being in the business of pouring tasting samples, I was surprised at the generosity of Meridien staff and glad I had my spittoon with me to ensure I could make it to wine five without succumbing to giddy excitement. The second wine we tasted was also a second wine, Macán Clásico, a varietal Tempranillo from the foot of Sierra Cántabria in Rioja Alavesa, where the company vineyards are owned jointly by the Alvarez family and the branch of the Rothschild family that also owns Chateau Lafitte Rothschild in Bordeaux. The Rothschild winery diaspora always builds from partnerships with local producers, and in this expression, we could feel the Bordelaise influence from barriques of French Oak, some grip in the tannins, and a notable lack of American oak, a development that fixes this wine in the new generation of expressions from Rioja. Lovers of older-style Rioja should remember that exchanges between Rioja and Bordeaux have been reciprocal, sometimes not beneficially, since phylloxera in the 1880s…

Next we tasted Pintia, a dazzlingly un-Toro expression from Toro. I’m pretty sure this wine is the best Toro I’ve ever tasted, and I’m already saving my shekels for a bottle to put away and forget. In this region of cold winters and blazing hot summers, Tempos plantings in Toro are very low density – 2X2 meters – and unirrigated. In the past, I’ve been quite negative about tannin-bombs from Toro – no fruit no future, I say – but the 2015 Pintia managed to achieve elegant balance with black cherries and black currants, even a note of grilled hamburger, if that’s possible, perhaps having something to do with 20% American oak set against the French. The Tempos vignerons have learned to pick the grapes for PIntia early, keeping potential alcohol within the bounds of sanity, but most interestingly, after picking, the berries for Pintia spend 24 hours in a cooling chamber at 4 degrees Celsius. This chill-treatment stops sugars from continuing to accumulate even after picking. Like so many expressions from Tempos Vega Sicilia, Pintia is a wine whose origin I would never have guessed blind until now, but Pintia innovations are leading the way to new heights of quality for wines from Toro.

After the Pintia, the more-expensive 2017 Alión, a sister vineyard to Vega Sicilia in Ribera del Duero, tasted a little thin. Several of us agreed later that the tasting might have gone better had we tasted this wine before the more intense Pintia. In keeping with the Tempos philosophy, Alión is aged in French barriques, all new, and so perhaps it still needs time to reveal its full potential. Berries and chocolate with vanilla and fine-grained tannin will take more years to integrate fully. To me the fruit seemed occluded by typical Ribero del Duero tannins, but Alión is nevertheless a worthy younger cousin to Vega Sicilia UNICO, with its monumental aging program.

For the fifth wine we returned to Oremos and a late-harvest expression, botrytis affected, and finally their magical Tokaji of 5 puttonyos. It seemed to me that although Aszu wine is labor-intensive and technical to produce, the late-harvest expression must be even more difficult to get right, for the whole bunches are picked and fermented when they have about 50% Aszu grapes, and still the wine manages to retain brilliant freshness to balance its 90gm/l of sugar. The 5-puttonyo expression is made in the traditional manner where Aszu grapes are picked separately on multiple passes through the vineyard and added to the fermenting must to keep the action going in the base wine derived from healthy grapes. Though this process sounds complicated, I feel it must be easier to predict outcomes than with the late-harvest crapshoot.

Oremos vineyards are still recovering from the haphazard practices of the communist era, but re-plantings of furmint already comprise 2/3 of Oremos’ vineyards, and dry furmint is their largest volume for export. Oremos, Tempos Vega Sicilia, and the Alvarez family, well deserve all the respect they receive for leading the way to higher quality wine production, first in Ribera del Duero, then in Hungary, later in Toro and Rioja. Quietly and defiantly independent, the Alvarez family remain persistently outside the mainstream but intelligently and courageously ahead of wine fashion wherever they go.

Thanks as always to Sergio Valente for staging one of the best tastings of the year so far.