The wines of Maurer

In the nineteenth century, the Maurer family left Salzburg to settle further south in Austria-Hungary, where they started making wine from grapes grown in vineyards in the famous Hungarian wine region of Srémsko. Much has changed since: the Austro-Hungarian empire disappeared, the region became Serbian, and Serbia turned communist. But the Maurer family kept making wine - now fully independent again, still the only ones left in what was once such a famous wine region.

That forgotten Hungarian wine region of Srémsko lies on the flanks of the Tarcal mountains, 70 kilometers along the Hungarian-Serbian border and a stretch of the Croatian-Serbian border - a unique and unspoiled ecosystem. The Tarcal mountains are 500 million years old, and the vineyards have a lot of volcanic material in the soil. No wonder wine has been made here for 3,000 years. Unfortunately, the Maurer family's wine business is the only one still active here.

Led by Oszkár Maurer, the Maurer family currently farms about 10 ares of vineyards. Several are very old - the Kadarka vines were already planted in 1880, other vineyards even before the Second and sometimes the First World War. They are populated with the typical (forgotten) grape varieties that have stood here for centuries, such as Bakator, Mézes Fehér, Kövidinka, but also (slightly) better-known ones like Kadarka, Kékfrankos and Riesling.

The Maurer family attaches great value to old traditions. They continue to focus mainly on the old indigenous varieties of the Srémsko region. They farm organically in the vineyard and let the wines ferment on wild yeasts. They don't filter the wines and add a minimum of sulfite. Most wines age in oak barrels, and they often let the skins soak in the must - in the case of white grapes, this gives you orange wines, just as it once did in this forgotten Hungarian wine region.

If you want to know more about this winery, here you will find the link to the website of Maurer.