During the summer we acquired an orchard near our weekend house in Siófok. It had been in Györgyi's family, originally belonging to her father. The place had been on sale for some time but in this area which is officially designated as farming land, buyers are rare. At one time it was very popular for Hungarians to have a weekend house where they could grow their own fruit, but the current generation are not interested, and there is a lot of land up for sale at low prices.
Anyhow, since it had failed to sell we decided to buy it out; it didn't cost a lot. The land area is 1500sq.m. which contains 12 rows of grapevine, 42 fruit trees and a house with wine cellar. There are some pictures of the house and garden at http://kiliti.webs.com/ - a rough and ready web page we used during the summer to try to attract some (low)paying guests interested in a 'back to nature' experience. Over the winter we plan some renovations to upgrade the house. I'll post some pictures of the wine cellar soon.
This blog will follow our efforts to make our own wine! At the moment there is a man, Sándor, who does the work and he will help us make our first wine this year. Since Györgyi's father died a few years ago, nobody has made wine here - the vines were maintained but the grapes were sold on. This morning I made the first step by washing out the bath and equipment where the grapes are pressed - dirty work because it hadn't been used in some years.
Wishing you good luck Patrick, wine making is not so easy - as I heard. But the most important is to have a professional helper in the beginning, hopefully Sándor will share all of his knowledge and then we will be able to taste the first "Patrick Pince" wines in a little bit!
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