THE HISTORY OF VITICULTURE IN VILLÁNY

The area of Villány, the community that gave its name to the region, has been populated since prehistoric times. The stone utensils and earthenware found in the quarry on Templom-hegy above the village, and the Bronze Age objects-pick-axes and spearheads-excavated in the vicinity, bear testimony to an advanced early civilization.

Historic cellars

The last of the ancient people to have settled in the Villány area were the Celts. Grape seed finds elsewhere in the country have led researchers to conclude that the Celts already cultivated vines in the Carpathian Basin. This makes it quite reasonable to assume that grape-growing in Villány goes back to Celtic times, even though direct evidence for it cannot be traced back beyond the Romans.

Press house with an ornate facade on the Nagyharsdny row, below the quarry

During the Magyar Conquest, Villány became one of the first permanent encampments, initially owned by the clans of Kán, Katán and Bor. With the foundation of the Hungarian Kingdom it presumably became crown property. In the wake of the Mongolian Invasion, cultivation was mostly confined to the immediate vicinity and defense zone of fortified castles, as in Somló , Buda, Sopron, Csókakő , Tokaj, Eger and, in the area of Villány, Siklós and Szársomlyó . The founding charter of the Szársomlyó Castle, issued in 1249 by King Béla IV, mentions vineyards around the village of Harsány. Documents from the centuries following the Mongolian Invasion, including a deed from 1352 in which Márton and László Pálfia Villányi agree to the division of an estate between them, all attest to the continuity of grape-growing and winemaking in the area. Before the arrival of the conquering Ottomans, the Villány Hills and their vicinity were densely populated. A number of villages emerged along the road skirting the range from the south, including Perecske, Szent- Márton, Hídvég, and Marótfalva.

The Ottoman tax registers and other documents show that wine production in the region survived for a while even under the yoke of the Islamic administration. For instance, the village of Perecske in 1559 yielded 110 köböl (about 2,750 gallons) of wine. The quantities reported for taxation purposes suggest that the area under cultivation must have been quite extensive. In the later phase of the Ottoman rule, however, the region could not escape devastation any more than other parts of occupied Hungary. Villány and several other wine-producing villages in the area were eventually destroyed so thoroughly that travelers found a mere wasteland overgrown with weeds where the houses used to stand. Threatened by constant skirmishes, the dwellers had to flee their villages a number of times. Peace and a period of calm finally set in when the Ottomans were ousted in the Battle of Nagyharsány in 1687.

The repopulation of Villány and the neighboring villages began in the 1690's. Under the settlement scheme between 1692 and 1695, organized by Csernovic and Monaszterly, a first wave of Serbs flooded the formerly all-Hungarian villages. By the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, Villány was featured in the treasury register as a village populated by ethnic Serbs. By that time, Serbs had let down roots in Palkonya, Kövesd, and Jakabfalu as well. The 1701 census of Count Batthyány's estate documents the ongoing plantation of vineyards by the settlers. As far as we know, it was the Serbs who brought with them the Kadarka grape variety and the red wine culture of the Balkans, starting in the 15th century. We have therefore this ethnic group to credit with the work of laying the foundations of red wine production in Villány. Census data from 1696, during the early days of resettlement a few years after the Ottomans were driven out, cite a mere 20 kapás of vines around Villány (one kapás measured between 700 and 900 square meters). At the time Villány formed part of the estate centered in Siklos, which in 1699 was acquired by Eugene of Savoy, the eminent military commander. The Treasury officials instating the field marshal in his property counted ten houses in the village. Characteristically, the rebuilding concentrated on the hillside, no doubt on account of the proximity of the vineyards. The wine made from the fruit harvested on a total area of 50 kapás was typically red or siller, a transition between red and ros6 not unlike French Clairet. By 1702, the area under cultivation had increased to 150 kapás, and 15 years later records listed 32 Serbian vineyardists. Eugene of Savoy's holdings comprised 26 villages, some of which eventually evolved into the Bellye Estate that was to become linked inseparably with the history of Villány and the region's viticulture. (The village of Bellye belongs to Croatia today as Bilje). As a result of purposeful estate management, the 1720 national census overseen by Acsady registered a considerable vineyard size of 800 kapás, of which 200 kapás belonged directly to the Estate, with the remaining 600 having been planted by the serfs. The data indicate that the new dwellers cleaned out the old growing sites that had been reclaimed by woods and shrubs during the Ottoman Occupation, and even proceeded to plant virgin lots. Their diligence was only thwarted by Rákóczi's War of Independence and the subsequent plague that hit the region in a series of waves and claimed as many victims as it did elsewhere in the country.

Villány in 1930

From the mid-18th century, the Bellye Estate began to assert itself in the central role of advancing viticulture in Villány. In the early 1740's, the Serbs, who had been brought in to replenish the Hungarian population decimated during the Ottoman Occupation, still dominated villages like Palkonya, Kövesd, Villány, and Virágos. Research conducted by Dr. Imre Lajber has shown a gradual rise in the number of German settlers in the area from 1745 onwards. After Virágos, now part of Villány itself, became the first all-German village in the region, the balance of ethnic composition tipped in favor of the Germans in Palkonya as well. The German majority in the village of Villány emerged between 1753 and 1755, and began to put the Serbs out of business by acquiring their lots in the vineyards. Beyond the exigency to boost the dwindled population, the stimulation of German settlement probably had a lot to do with the fact that in 1736 the domain of Eugene of Savoy, who died without an heir, reverted to the Crown. Until 1780, the property was leased from the Treasury by two Armenians, Lukács Lázár and Izsák Kis, who were set on turning a pretty profit on their lease. However, they found that "the sloth and ignorance of the Serbs" hindered the efficient cultivation of the Estate. The demand of the tenants for skilled, hard-working labor may have thus contributed to attracting Germans-known locally as Sváb, that is Swabians-to the area.

In his treatise entitled Descriptio Comitatus Baranyensis, Mátyás Bél , the prominent pastor with encyclopedic interests, lists the grape varieties grown in Baranya county at the time. According to Matolay, in the 1730's-that is immediately before the wave of German settle-ment-these included the Hajnal or Gohér (a grape that used to be one of the traditional varieties in Tokaj, where efforts are under way for its re-establishment), the Lisztes fehér, the Hárslevelű (also famous in Tokaj and Somló ), the Ökörszemű törökszőlő, the Muskotály (Muscat), the Tótfekete, and the Kadarka.

The estate press house with fermentation vats, before World War I

A harvest wagon with a barrel. Villány, 1930

An ornate press house from the end of the I9tb century

A row of cellars

The arrival of the Germans meant a turning point in Villány's viticulture not only because of their expertise and industrious habits, but also because they brought with them the Portugieser variety, known in Hungarian then as Oportó, today as Kékoportó. Some authors claim that the Germans were also responsible for the naturalization of Kékfrankos (Blaufrankisch) in Villány. In view of the lists above, it seems safe to assume that these latter two grapes did not appear here until after 1730.

By the time the Estate had been acquired by Archduchess Marie Christine, the Germans had outweighed other ethnicities in the village. In 1785, the chief engineer of the Estate could boast of 984 kapás (about 50 hectares) of prime vines: "Our most precious holding was the 984 kapás of a very productive first-class vineyard on the southern slope of the hill, which was named after the village and yielded excellent wine." The farming methods of the archducal Estate were easily the most modern by central European standards, and the increasingly intensive and quality-oriented wine production helped the village rise to prominence in the area.

The boom made itself felt in the way press houses and cellars were built. Most of the serfs, who did not own a cellar on the hill, collected the harvested grapes in huge vats, which they hauled on wagons to the cellars located on the outskirts of the village. The cellar row as a construction pattern is typical of German communities in Hungary. Its most wonderful specimens are found in Villány and .its vicinity, including in Villánykövesd and Palkonya. First built here around 1760, these rows consisted of buildings combining the functions of the press house and the cellar. They served as a place for processing and vinifying the grapes, as well as for handling, aging, and tasting the finished wine. The "harvest wagon," widely encountered in other Hungarian wine regions as well, remained in general use he re until the middle of the 20th century.

The second half of the 18th century saw the beginnings of construction on the hill itself Of the wooden frame press houses, typical of Fachwerk or German folk architecture, that were initially built, practically none has been spared to tell the store today. Visiting the area in the early1800's, Ferenc Schams praised the abundance of fine cellars on the hill. Bishop Mihály Hats, in his 1845 book on Baranya County, also reports on the "wide currency of pretty cellar buildings on the vine hills of the county. As long as these cellars hide a drop, the men of Baranya will keep returning here to while away the happiest of their days, drowning their troubles in their wine. . ."

Rapt commentators on the wine of Villány like to quote Mihály Haas, who lamented that "Hungarian wines do not enjoy the recognition that they would deserve. The same holds true for our reds, among which the Villányi stands out as the ancient oak tree that has witnessed centuries go by rises above the shrubbery." Miksa Hobling, in his 1845 memoir entitled A Medical Local History of Baranya County, praises Villányi as "the king of Hungarian wines by virtue of its power and refinement of taste, which can challenge the best of Burgundy in quality..." The excellence of Villány wines is evidenced by bottles that showed up on the other side of the Atlantic as early as in the mid-1800's, including a shipment to New York from the 1841 vintage. In the book we have already quoted from, Haas mentions "transports to Pest and Vienna, but in particular to Bács, Verőcze, and Styria."

The rhythm of proportions: the cellar village of Palkonya

In an invaluable account on page 28, Haas describes "the estate cellar in Villány, in which eight thousand ako [about a 100,000 gallons] of Villanyi wine is subjected to the most expedient treatment. Most of the superb juice is filled in bottles for delivery via Monies to Pest, Vienna, and even Brazil." This shows that export sales of good Hungarian wine-something we are now toiling to accomplish-were the order of the day in Villány 160 years ago.

The progress of estate farming, the emergence of the highway system, and the well-maintained trade relations between various parts of the country all contributed to enhancing the importance of Villány as a village perched on the boundary between the hills and the plain. The advances in wine production were naturally seconded by those in commerce and industry. The Germans continued to fortify their position within the population, and by 1864 they numbered 1,320 for the 25 Serbian and 8 Jewish residents of Villány. Grape-growing received a further impetus from the nation-wide emancipation of serfs in 1851. The vineyard area under cultivation in Villány increased from 376 hold (about 214 hectares) in 1865 to 576 hold (about 328 hectares) in 1895. The spectacular progress was only halted by the phylloxera, which pushed viticulture on the brink of extinction throughout Europe, but the country emerged from the crisis with a much more modern outlook due to new methods and new grape varieties. This makes it especially interesting today to study the harvesting and wine-making practices of the peasantry in the middle of th 19th century. In 1838, Ferenc Schams gave the following account: "The harvested clusters are collected in hods. After being trampled by foot or crushed with the aid of a wooden plunger, the mash is ladled into large vats set up alongside the road. The vats are covered with canvas and transported to the house, where the contents arc transferred to a so-called kaca. This is simply another type of large vat that narrows toward the top and is fitted with a spigot 30 centimeters from the bottom.

The cellar village of Palkonya

In wealthy households this vat is sheltered in the pantry, while the poor simply cover it with a lid made from wood planks. Once drawn from the vats, the wine is racked into casks; no press is used. The marc that stays behind in the vat is sealed with a layer of mud and used later to make brandy. In some places the wine is left on the skins, sealed with mud the same way, and drawn in quantities that would be consumed at a time.''

Before the phylloxera, the most wide-spread white grapes in the region were the Fügér, Járdovány, Tökösfehér, Spanyol, Kéknyelű, Gyüdi fehér, Sárfehér, Juhfark, Furmint, and Fehér burgundi varieties, while red wine was typically made from Kadarka, Oportó, or Kékfrankos. Although the peasant traditions have been very influential, no picture of Villány's viticultural heritage could be complete without a discussion of the already mentioned archducal estate. Let us first quote a somewhat convoluted passage from a work published by János Jankó in 1846: "By the prevalent public sentiment of the entire noble county, I feel authorized to convey our most ardent gratitude above all to the imperial and royal highness of Archduke Carl, who in his far and wide-ranging Bellye Estate has made a tremendous sacrifice of expenses to show us an opportunity and example to master and follow the most refined and most recent methods in cultivating and farming our lands, and who has now graciously proposed daring experiments in viticulture by consigning entire vineyards on the hills of Villány to the propagation of foreign varieties, demonstrating not merely their usefulness but indeed their aptitude to ennoble our own wines..."

The most authentic source to corroborate that the archducal estate was run on the highest of standards and continued to set the example for the peasantry to follow is a work entitled Description of the Relive Estate of His Royal Highness the Arhcduke Albrecht, published in 1883 by the National Economic Association of Hungary. The special interest of the book lies in the accuracy of data and the technical precision with which it discusses grape-growing and winemaking in the decades preceding the phylloxera. A brief introduction to Villány on page 64 describes the village as "occupying the eastern slope of the Siklós-Harsány Hills, and a marvelous sight, when viewed from the east and the south, with the numerous press houses and cellars scattered among its vineyards. Villány is also a major railroad junction, where the branch from the Great Plain [with vital communication to Eszék, today Osijek in Croatia - J.L.] intersects with the Mohács-Pécs loop. This situation enables the village to access with case a world-wide market for its wine, whose reputation is ensured by scrupulous cellar work and conscientious handling. The predominantly German-derived population numbers 1809. The village has lime-stone quarries and lime kilns of considerable size, a post office, a water mill driven bv the ereek Karasicza, and even the privilege to hold nationwide fairs... The archducal estate here occupies 239 holds, and 410 negyszogol, including 44 holds and 1,398 négyszögöl of vines [about 137 and 26 hectares, re spectively-the négyszögöl is an area meausure corresponding to 3.57 m2 that is still used in Hungary to express the size of building lots]. This is also where the central facility of viticulture and oenology is located..."

"Vines on the estate are planted in even rows at a distance of 3 feet from each other. Within the rows, Kadarka vines are spaced by 24 inches, all other varieties by 30 inches..."

The metric system was introduced by an Act of Parliament in 1907. Prior to that, Austria and Hungary used the following system:

1 öl = 6 feet = 72 inches 1 öl = 1,89648 m 1 foot = 31,608 cm 1 inch = 2,634 cm

After pruning, in Portugieser and Riesling plantations a 5 foot-long stake is driven into the ground to support each stock. The next step is the tying of Riesling canes... The various phases of work in the vineyard included uncovering, pruning, staking, a first hoeing in mid- April, then tying in the middle of June, thinning, and a second hoeing. These were followed by a second tying, trimming, and defoliation. Late August or early September was a time for a third hoeing and repeated defoliation. After harvest, each hold of vines was spread with 35 metric tons of seasoned catde manure in a 7-year rotation scheme. The vineyards were hoed in before the onset of winter.

"Harvest is regularly held some time between the middle of October and mid-November. The first grape to be picked is always the Portugieser, which normally ripens two weeks before Kadarka. After the Portugieser, Kadarka is next. When harvesting Portugieser and Kadarka, workers remove every cluster from the vines, but they take care to separate unripe and rotten grapes from fully ripened and perfectly sound fruit."

"The harvest of Riesling is delayed until most of the vineyards have contracted noble rot. At that time the harvest is begun, but it will be confined to picking those clusters that have succumbed to the noble rot completely. When most of the grapes left after the first go have reached the noble rot stage, a second harvest may ensue, followed by a third and a fourth go. After picking, the white grapes are crushed in the grape mill, and the must is left on the pips and skins for a period of 24 hours. Finally, the mash is first pressed coarsely using an elbow press, and then a second and last time with a large, levered press..."

"... Red grapes are first put through coarse-mesh sieves, then pressed in the grape mill. In the press house, 70 hectoliters of sieved must and 10 hectoliters of marc are combined in large fermentation vats holding 80 hectoliters. During the rapid fermentation the must remains in contact with the air, and the entire fermenting mass is stirred around twice daily. Once the violent phase of fermentation is over, the marc surface is smoothed. This film of marc is left on top of the wine until tests show that the wine has clarified, i.e. that fermentation has been fully completed. This takes about three to four weeks. In the next step, the new red wine is racked into large wooden barrels in the cellars.''

"The typical wine cellar in Villány is directly adjacent to the press house and the officer's quarters. It is 180 öl long by 8 61 wide, with a ceiling height of 3 61. The aging room has a capacity for 300 casks, each holding 50 akó of wine. This adds up to a total cellar capacity of 15,000 akó . The temperature in the cellars is around 10 degrees Reaumur in the winter and 12-13 degrees in the summer. The cellar masters stress the importance of hygiene in every way, and they set great store by the correct timing of racking their wines.

A cellar today with barriques

Red wines are racked twice in the first year, twice in the second year, Winery and once in the third year; white wines are racked three times in the first year, twice in the second year, twice in the third year, and once again in the fourth year.

Once declared mature, the estate wines are bottled in the cellars, and it is in this form that they are usually sold in every corner of Europe. Some firms, such as Max Greger & Co. of London, also regularly purchase bulk wine by the cask."

I think these quotations suffice to demonstrate the professional standards that have guaranteed prominence for Villány among the other wine regions of Hungary for the past three hundred years.