Lately, there has been less mention of our wines on our platforms, however, naturally, they still play a crucial role in our restaurant’s life. We keep searching for new additions and we have been through a busy period. In the weeks before introducing our new menu, we’ve been to countless tastings and gathered important (taste) experiences.
Yet as sommeliers, we still have a huge disadvantage against the kitchen or juice teams as we are not creating, nor doing creative work, but mediating, and that might make people less interested in us.
Sommeliers and servers are storytellers, telling the stories of others whose work involves a great deal of creativity, philosophy and hard work.
Wine and gastronomy are cultural products. To spread the culture, storytellers, like ourselves, are needed. Since we are best at telling stories that have had an impact on us, we try to search for themes that interest us. Therefore at SALT, besides the must-haves on our wine list, we focus on wines that we’ve been touched by in one way or another – through the philosophy of a winemaker or through an exciting taste experience. Our wine selection is strictly subjective. That said, we have a well-established opinion on what we consider to be good wine, whether it is natural or conventional.
I believe that our new wine selection once again includes a wide range of good wines with good stories. One example is the first Czech wine in the history of Salt from Milan Nestarec. The wine called Dopamin is a blend of several vintages of Green Veltliner, Chardonnay and Riesling matured in the winery’s brand new, 3,000-litre Stockinger barrels, which gives it a lovely vanilla creaminess to the beautiful citrus flavour. It begged to be paired with our sheep curd puliszka…
In our Hungarian wine list, the 3-4 wineries whose wines consistently deliver the purity and bursting natural power we look for in organic wines year after year start to crystalise. So, after some downtime, you can, once again, enjoy wines from Szóló Winery, István Bencze or Árpi Tomcsányi with your dishes. There are, however, some newcomers as well. Kriszti Csetvei’s wines from Mór escaped my attention in recent years although I have worked with her wines before and liked them a lot. Now she is back in the game with a series titled Raw/Ka. The youngest member on our wine list (2023) is an orange wine made from tramini and pinot gris, a real fruit bomb for a summer menu with a restrained aromaticity thanks to the ageing in skins.
It is interesting to note that for our prestige wine list, even though it was not a goal, it turned out that most of the wines come from biodynamic wineries. One example is the German Wittman family’s 2018 vineyard-selected Kirchspiel Riesling from Westhofen. In the cellar, they combine traditional and modern techniques to make the most complex and beautiful wines possible. They absolutely do not disappoint.
