Somló is a 832 hectare wine region  in the Veszprém

Veszprém (county)

Veszprém is the name of an administrative county in Hungary. Veszprém is also the name of the capital city of Veszprém county.-Veszprém county:...

 and Vas counties, in the North-West of Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

. Most of the region is situated on the slopes of an extinct volcano

Volcano

2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...

, crowned by the ruins of an 11th century castle, overlooking the plain. The wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

s of Somló, exclusively white, are made out of the grape varieties Hárslevelű

Hárslevelu

Hárslevelű , also called Lipovina , Frunza de tei , Lindenblättriger and Feuille de Tilleul is a grape variety from the Pontian Balcanica branch of Vitis vinifera.The name refers to the "lime leaf" in each of these languages...

, Furmint

Furmint

Furmint is a variety of wine grape from the Pontian Balcanica branch of Vitis vinifera, used for white wines. The name Furmint is taken from the word "froment" for the wheat-gold color of the wine it produces. While it is possible that it the grape is native to Hungary, the grape was likely...

, Juhfark

Juhfark

Juhfark in is a variety of grape, of the species Vitis vinifera. The name in Hungarian literally means sheep's tail. The term refers to the elongated, cylindrical shape of the clusters....

, Welschriesling

Welschriesling

Welschriesling is an ancient variety of white wine grape, unrelated to the Rhine Riesling, that is grown throughout Central Europe. The origin of Welschriesling is uncertain. The German name "Welschriesling" literally means 'Romanic Riesling', and most of the synonyms in Central Europe are...

, Traminer and Chardonnay

Chardonnay

Chardonnay is a green-skinned grape variety used to make white wine. It is originated from the Burgundy wine region of eastern France but is now grown wherever wine is produced, from England to New Zealand...

. Some Sylvaner is also grown in the region.
While traditionally the region consisted of large vineyards of rich aristocrats and religious institutions (E.g. the Archabbey of Pannonhalma), now it is predominantly small plots, many of them belonging to part-time or hobby vintners, that rule the landscape.

History

The wines of Somló have a long and celebrated history; indeed, the region’s fame at some point is said to have rivaled that of Tokaj

Tokaj-Hegyalja

Tokaj-Hegyalja is a historical wine region located in southeastern Slovakia and northeastern Hungary. Hegyalja means "foothills" in Hungarian, and this was the original name of the region....

. Its wine figures as medicine in old Hungarian pharmacopeias (Vinum Somlaianum omni tempore sanum). In the eighteenth-nineteenth century, Habsburg

Habsburg

The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...

 emperors/kings of Austria and Hungary, esp. Maria Theresia

Maria Theresa of Austria

Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma...

and Joseph II are claimed to have favored Somló wines. According to old, widespread but unsubstantiated lore, drinking Somló wine makes the conception of male children more likely. Hence its nickname: the wine of nuptial nights ( in Hungarian: a nászéjszakák bora).

Climate and geography

The basalt

Basalt

Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

 of the ancient lava flows

Lava

Lava refers both to molten rock expelled by a volcano during an eruption and the resulting rock after solidification and cooling. This molten rock is formed in the interior of some planets, including Earth, and some of their satellites. When first erupted from a volcanic vent, lava is a liquid at...

, along with loess

Loess

Loess is an aeolian sediment formed by the accumulation of wind-blown silt, typically in the 20–50 micrometre size range, twenty percent or less clay and the balance equal parts sand and silt that are loosely cemented by calcium carbonate...

 and sand in the soil, the windy, moderately warm climate and the mostly traditional, oxidative wine making technologies (vinification in oak barrels) yield wines with a characteristic acidic-mineral taste. They age well, and are traditionally drunk at a slightly higher temperature than most whites (14-15 °C

Celsius

Celsius is a scale and unit of measurement for temperature. It is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius , who developed a similar temperature scale two years before his death...

).

Further reading

• Liddell, Alex (2003). "5 The Northwest". In The Wines of Hungary, pp. 73–104. London: Mitchell Beazley.