🍾 Sauska

Sauska is a Hungarian wine company with wineries in two regions, Villány in the south and Tokaj in the north-east, plus an ageing cellar for sparkling wine in Budafok, Budapest. Wikidata gives 2000 as its founding year. According to the company, its first Villány harvest was in 2006 and its first Tokaj harvest, focused on dry wines, in 2009; the family traces its wine roots to Christian Sauska's great-grandfather Gedeon Rohonczy, who grew vines at Törökbecse around 1890.

According to the company, its first dry Tokaj cuvées came out in 2011, when it also began collecting reserve wines for non-vintage sparkling wines; these sparkling wines moved into the new Budafok cellar in 2015. In Villány it makes red wines, including a Cabernet Franc with the Siklós designation from 2016. In 2023 a new Sauska Tokaj winery opened at Padihegy, near Rátka.

According to the company, it opened a winery and the bistro Sauska 48 in Villány in 2017; the French soil microbiologists Lydia and Claude Bourguignon studied the Tokaj soils in 2007, Stefano Chioccioli joined in 2010, and the Champagne winemaker Régis Camus joined in 2017. The Tokaj production specification (10th version) caps yields for white wine at 14 tonnes of grapes per hectare and requires Tokaj sparkling wine to be made by second fermentation in the bottle, with the cuvée kept on its lees for at least 90 days and at least 24 months of ageing if a vintage is stated.

Tokaj and Villány are protected designations of origin (PDO) listed in the EU register eAmbrosia. Under EU law a PDO wine must be made entirely from grapes grown in the defined area and be produced there; for sparkling wine the EU also sets minimum pressure and alcohol levels.

Why it matters to you. One producer here makes wine in two regions; the designation on the label, Tokaj or Villány, tells you where the grapes come from. The WHO reminds: there is no safe level of alcohol.