The story of the winery

In the spring of 1996, Zsuzsanna and I drove to Eger looking for wine, for tastings, for discovery. Nothing was open.

The next morning, Géza — Zsuzsi’s father — said only this: “If you love wine that much, there’s a beautiful wine region right next to Budapest. It’s called Etyek.”

That sentence changed my life. By that afternoon I was on Öreghegy, drinking wine in a small cellar with an old woman. I turned to Zsuzsi and said: “Let’s make wine.”

We started building the winery in 1998 on land with no water, no road, no electricity. Just earth and conviction.

Architect Ferenc Schüller envisioned a Tuscan village rising organically from Hungarian soil, built from Sóskút limestone. The square window — repeated in fences, walls, doors — became our quiet brand symbol: a window for curiosity.

Zsuzsi and I drove to Abasár for our first vines: Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Zenit. We planted them with our own hands, and tamed the scale of what we’d taken on with one or two glasses of pálinka in the evenings.

Those vines are still alive. They live on in the Öreghegy Cuvée — the wine that remembers our beginnings.

Dániel arrived in 2003 and shaped Haraszthy with the discipline of a wizard. In 2007 he created the Sir Irsai — light, vibrant, no more than 11.5% alcohol.

My father, with all the gravity of a deeply Catholic man, smiled and gave it a name only he could give: “Pipi de Dios” — God’s holy water. Since then, Sir Irsai is Haraszthy’s everyday blessing. A first glass for generations. A promise, not a conclusion.

In 2011, in LA, Ingeborg fell in love with a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and said: “We have to make this in Hungary.”

Years of work, Rauscedo clones, a decisive nine-o’clock morning tasting through 42 samples — and we made our own unicorn. Today we’re one of Hungary’s largest Sauvignon Blanc producers.

In 2015 we bought 123 hectares of land in Vál. The estate is run by Sándor Kollai — an agronomist who once literally jumped the fence of my Santa Ynez ranch and introduced himself: “I’m Hungarian. I can take care of your Hungarian land.”

Estates aren’t defined by hectares. They’re defined by the people who walk them every day.

In 2015, one of Burning Man’s most-awarded sculptures caught my eye. Its name: LOVE. A man and a woman seated back to back, while their inner children reach for each other.

In 2016 we brought it to Hungary. Today it stands among the Vál vineyards, open 24 hours, welcoming thousands every year. Love, like wine, is meant to be shared.

In 2018 we repositioned the restaurant. Schüller designed a glass roof that put architecture in direct conversation with the surrounding vineyards.

The project won an architecture prize. Today, Matador is one of the region’s leading wine and gastronomy destinations.

In a single week of 2020, my mentor passed away and my first granddaughter, Viktória, was born. Two weeks later the world stopped for COVID.

Birth and loss, continuity and fragility — colliding under a moon in Aquarius. The Aquarius wine was born from that collision: a late-harvest Zenit, our oldest indigenous variety, the wine that remembers.