KONCZ RÉKA
Barabás / Bük
Listening to Forgotten Hills
Réka’s story doesn’t start in a famous vineyard. It starts with curiosity about the ones nobody was looking at — scattered, half-abandoned parcels in the remote hills of northeastern Hungary, holding onto rare local varieties and memories nobody had bothered to write down.
She went looking anyway. What she found became the foundation of everything she does: heritage vines on volcanic ground, worked by hand, farmed organically, guided by the land’s own rhythm instead of a formula. In the cellar she steps back on purpose — spontaneous fermentations, long macerations, neutral vessels, nothing corrected, nothing polished away.
The result is wine that feels like a fingerprint. Rhyolite, dacite, tuff — the volcanic trio of Zemplén — show up as a signature clarity you can taste, vine by vine, bottle by bottle. Réka works a tiny 3-hectare estate like she’s writing personal notes from the vineyard, and every one of them is unrepeatable.
Try if you’re into: mineral whites, gentle aromatics, thoughtful winemaking that never shouts.KONCZ RÉKA
