Hummel

Horst Hummel was born near Stuttgart to a Schwabian-Hungarian family; his great-grandfather had been a winemaker in the Austro-Hungarian empire. In autumn 1997 Horst came to Hungary to trace his family's roots and, being passionate about wine, set out to visit the country's best winemaking regions. He fell in love with Villány - the southernmost Hungarian wine region, famous for Bordeaux-style reds - and casually asked his hosts about the price for vineyards. Within days he was the owner of a plot. By spring 1998 Weingut Hummel was up and running. Today Horst lives in Berlin and commutes back and forth.

The estate works seven and a half hectares in Villány - not the volcanic soils of Somló but clay and loess with limestone, the classic Villány matrix. Farmed organically since 2008, biodynamically since 2016. The plantings are mostly reds: Kékfrankos, Portugieser, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, with Furmint and Hárslevelű and a little Traminer on the white side.

In the cellar: spontaneous fermentation in open vats, extended maceration for reds (two to four weeks), skin contact for some whites, up to two years in used oak. Since 2020 Horst has farmed under what he calls Natural Synergetic Winegrowing - his own framework, which he has published as a book - and uses specific frequencies played to barrels, reportedly to address faults like mousiness. His wines sit apart from Villány's polished conventional mainstream.