Besides the Obvious

What is Villány about

To speak about visiting Villány and its wines and cellars is just a pleasure. I am a wine lover. Actually, once open a time I wrote a novel about wines and honestly, I never had tasted a Villány wine before. That could sound contradictory but it’s not. As a Spanish guy I never heart about Villány before being personally engaged to Hungary. Indeed, besides Budapest, Hungary (Magyarország for Hungarians) is sadly a very unknown territory for Spanish people. Even though it’s a member of the European Union and despite of the education level those people reached. Not to mention Villány wines and cellars.

Villány is the most southern wine region famous it’s top reds and rosés. According to its geographic location has hot summers with long sunny days, followed by a mild winter. The climate there is sub-Mediterranean climate and they produced high quality full-bodied and aromatic spicy wines.  

According to archaeological researches winemaking traditions in the region can be traced back to Pannonian Roman times. Probably, they have discovered the touristic potential more recently but they have succeeded to exploit it in a friendly funny way. That is barely available at least in the most touristic wine regions in Spain.  

What to expect from Villány

You could expect to find there wine cellars, wine tastings, wine museums and nice restaurants, but they have created their own concept of a wine tasting village. Villány is a real village where locals live, they have their houses and their jobs but taking a stroll along the main streets, as a welcome inexpert visitor you will have the feeling that every house is a cellar, and inside every cellar there is a bar and behind the bar a kitchen providing nice local simple food to the tables in internal beautiful courtyards, where tourist from all around Hungary and neighbour countries join to eat, laugh and taste.  

The old-style cute houses, attached to each other, forming traditional looking like streets, are the stops of a path that the visitor is more than happy to do it completely looking forward to stop and get in every open door to discover what’s in. Some wineries, like Bock or Gere, have their own accommodation. And some wineries have opened their own restaurants there. We have spent the night in Gere´s Diófa Panzió and it’s really worth to have the chance of sleeping just there. It has a proper cellar accommodation, especially after a long chuckling tasting evening.         

Why to go to Villány

Portugieser is the main grape variety in Villány along with the three Bordeaux traditional varieties. Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot but Zweigelt, Kadarka and Pinot Noir are also present. According to that visitors are able to taste and buy many different types for all budgets and preferences. Villány as a touristic hub offers also nearly spots suitable to families, couples, groups of friends, backpackers and lonely travelers. They all like the already mentioned town of Pécs, the thermal baths in Harkány, the medieval castle in Siklós and the church in Máriagyűd, a popular place of pilgrimage accessible in three-hour drive from Budapest taking M6 highway with a rental car or catching a bus that departs from Népliget bus terminal in four hours ride from the capital. 

Egészségedre!

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