Pannonhalma Abbey Winery

Region: Pannonhalma – Sokoróalja

“As on a royal throne, Pannonhalma towers above the wide plain and a large stretch of vineyards below. The village of Saint Martin itself lies at the bottom of the monastery with its playful orchards.” These words by the Hungarian poet Ferenc Kazinczy from 1831 give us a hint of everything we wish to show to our Visitors at Pannonhalma Abbey Winery.

We pride ourselves on the gentleness and beauty of the Transdanubian countryside, the area west of the Danube known to Roman colonists as Pannonia, and the bottled juice of the carefully cultivated grape-wines as the fruit of divine creation and human endeavour, enriched by all the cultural values that the Benedictine monks have preserved and constantly renewed through the vicissitudes of a millennium for the pleasure of others and their own.

Asztrik Várszegi – Former Bishop and Archabbot of Pannonhalma

Vineyards of Pannonhalma Abbey Winery

The vineyards of the Abbey Winery are situated in the officially designated wine region of Pannonhalma which, with a total area of about 600 hectares, is one of the smallest of the 22 historic wine regions of Hungary. The weather conditions are balanced with average sunshine hours and heat, and higher than average precipitation. Most of the vines are grown on brown forest soils that formed on loess and sand. Consistently from vineyard to vineyard and in all vertical intervals, the soils are alkaline owing to the presence of lime.

The Pannonhalma Abbey Winery cultivates about 50 hectares divided among four major vineyards, each of which used to belong to the Abbey in the historic past. The new vines planted under a program started in 2001 are spaced at a distance of 2.4 x 0.8 m; the training system is Guyot. The goal was to achieve a planting density of over 5000 vines per hectare in order to significantly cut the yield per wine to harvest much better quality fruit. In our choice of cultivation techniques, we strive to keep an optimal balance between modern mechanization and fastidious manual labour.

Varieties

Since the natural conditions of Pannonhalma closely resemble those of the upper Loire Valley and Alsace, two-thirds of our vineyards are planted by grape varieties that make crisp, easy-drinking white wines of fine quality. This is the style of wine we seek to produce mainly from Rheinriesling, Sauvignon Blanc, and Gewürztraminer.

In designing the composition of our vineyards, we have made it a point to uphold local and historic traditions by making room for Welshriesling, a native Hungarian variety.

With visitors arriving from all corners of the world, we devoted one third of our acreage to popular international varieties that have shown good promise for the long term, such as Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. Among the red grapes, we give a prominent role to Pinot Noir as being ideally suited to the local climate and soils, and therefore uniquely capable of expressing the potential of Pannonhalma as a red wine producing district.

Visiting Pannonhalma Abbey Winery

H-9090 Pannonhalma, Vár 1.
Tel.: +36/96/570-222
Fax: +36/96/570-176
E-mail: winetasting@osb.hu
www.apatsagipinceszet.hu