Havas & Timár, 2018 “Franom” Cabernet Franc, Eger, Hungary
Cab Franc du Jour #136
Havas and Timár was established in 2011 as a partnership between two childhood friends, Balázs Havas and László Timár. A Budapest native, winemaker Balázs developed a passion for food and wine from an early age and always dreamed of one day having his own cellar and vineyards. During his viticulture and oenology studies he made several friends in Eger, and seeing the diversity and beauty of the region, he decided to establish the winery there.
Today the winery owns 1.5 hectares of vines and works with grower partners to source additional fruit. Cabernet Franc has been a passion and focus for Balázs from the beginning, and he currently makes wine from about 2.5 hectares of the variety in total. The first vintage of his Franom, which translates from Hungarian as “My Cabernet Franc,” was 2008. In the best vintages he also bottles a barrel selection under the Franom Hordóválogatás label, and he produces a Franom White, a white wine made from Cabernet Franc.
Cabernet Franc in Hungary
Cabernet Franc has a long history in Hungary, dating back to roughly the time of phylloxera, when rootstock breeder Zsigmond Teleki established an experimental vineyard of international and Hungarian varieties at his home in Villány to test grafting techniques for his rootstocks. Over time the grape has become very well adapted to Hungary’s climate and soils, and today it is the fifth most planted red variety in the country, grown in every wine region and increasingly regarded as a signature variety alongside Kékfrankos, Hungary’s most widely planted red. There are currently around 1,450 hectares of Cabernet Franc in the ground nationally, with the three leading regions being Villány at around 340 hectares, Eger at 253 hectares, and Szekszárd at 235 hectares.
Eger
There are approximately 5,500 hectares under vine in Eger, roughly two-thirds of which are red varieties. These reds are the foundation of the region’s most famous and historic wine, Egri Bikavér, or Bull’s Blood, a Kékfrankos-based blend with a history stretching back to the mid-19th century. Cabernet Franc is the fifth most planted red variety in Eger, playing a supporting role in Bikavér while also beginning to appear as a single-varietal bottling from a growing number of producers.
Eger sits in the northern part of Hungary, one of three wine districts that make up the larger Upper Hungary wine region alongside Mátra and Bükk, at approximately 47.5 degrees north latitude, comparable to that of the eastern Loire Valley. The region of Tokaj lies about 80km to the northeast, and Villány roughly 270km to the southwest.
The region encompasses 19 villages spread along roughly 25km of land in the southern foothills of the North Hungarian Mountains, with the Bükk range to the northeast and the Mátra mountains to the southwest. Vineyards are planted on undulating, moderately steep foothills with predominantly southeast, south, or southwest-facing exposures, at elevations ranging from around 150 to 280m above sea level. The region’s most celebrated vineyard, the Nagy-Eged hill, reaches up to 500m above sea level.
Eger’s climate is cool continental. The Bükk mountains play a defining role: they shelter the region from winter frost, and during summer the late afternoon and evening breezes descending from the mountains temper the warmer daytime temperatures. The mountains also limit rainfall, with the region receiving only around 600mm annually. Winters are long and cold, spring arrives late, and the overall growing season is relatively short, though autumn conditions are generally dry and sunny, favouring the ripening of later-maturing varieties.
The soils in Eger are particularly distinctive, dominated by subsoils of volcanic origin, principally rhyolite and rhyolite tuff, a softer, more porous material composed of consolidated volcanic ash and rock fragments. Topsoils vary across the region, with more clay and gravels found in the north and northwest, sandier soils in the south, and pockets of calcareous soils and loess scattered throughout.
The Rádé Vineyard
The Franom comes from approximately 1 hectare of a single vineyard, the Rádé, located in the village of Eger along its eastern boundary. The vineyard sits on a moderately steep southwest-facing slope ranging in elevation from about 215 to 260m above sea level. The site covers around 11 hectares in total and was planted in 1989, with Cabernet Franc making up the majority of the plantings, which is somewhat unusual for the region. The soils consist of a moderately deep brown clay topsoil with very good water-holding capacity over a subsoil of volcanic rhyolite tuff.
In the Cellar
The fruit is hand-harvested, destemmed, and crushed. Fermentation takes place in open-top vats with selected yeast and hand punchdowns during active fermentation, at a relatively cool temperature of around 22 to 23C. Total skin contact is five weeks. The wine then ages for 20 months in 225L Hungarian oak barrels, with 40% new oak and the remainder in barrels of two to five years of age. The wine is bottled unfiltered, and production for the 2018 vintage was approximately 3,900 bottles.
Wine Details
Producer: Havas & Timár Pincészet
Region: Upper Hungary
Wine District: Eger
Village: Eger
Vineyard: Rádé
Soil: Brown forest clays over volcanic rhyolite tuff
Alcohol: 14.5%