This is not simply great Kadarka—it is one of the world's great heritage wines. Ethereal yet profoundly deep, it opens with soaring aromas of rosehip, wild strawberry, sour cherry and crushed raspberry, laced with dried violet, blood orange, sweet spice and the haunting perfume of ancient vines. The palate is effortlessly weightless but astonishingly persistent, delivering remarkable purity, silky tannins and a mineral energy that seems to flow endlessly. Every detail speaks of its remarkable origin: impossibly old vines rooted in sand, yielding a wine of extraordinary finesse, complexity and longevity.

Once experienced, there is no escape—it lingers in the memory like a Siren's song.

Winemaker | Oszkár Maurer

Region | Subotica, Serbia

Variety | Kadarka

Viticulture | Organic certified

Soil | Sand, Alluvial limestone, Clay

Altitude | 50 - 100 m

Age of the vines | 146 years

Bottles made | 900 bottles

Interesting Facts

The clue is in the name. The vines producing this extraordinary wine were planted in 1880, making this the oldest known Kadarka vineyard on the planet. These are own-rooted, pre-phylloxera Vitis vinifera, preserved thanks to the region's deep sandy soils, which protected them from the devastation that wiped out much of Europe's vineyards in the late nineteenth century.

Today, these ancient bush vines produce tiny yields of intensely concentrated fruit, offering an increasingly rare glimpse into what Kadarka tasted like before phylloxera forever changed European viticulture. This is not only Oszkár Maurer's flagship wine, but one of the most historically significant wines still being made anywhere in the world.

Clay Instead of Wax

Oszkár's fascination with forgotten traditions extends even to the bottle. Rather than using plastic capsules, foil or artificial wax, each bottle is sealed with a layer of natural clay sourced from the vineyard itself—a fitting expression of his philosophy of letting the land speak through every detail.

Opening it is simple: drive the corkscrew through the clay, pull the cork halfway, brush away any loose clay, then remove the cork completely and enjoy.

Vinification

The fruit is harvested entirely by hand before being destemmed and naturally fermented in open-top vats with indigenous yeasts. Around two weeks of gentle maceration extracts the wine's remarkable aromatic complexity and fine tannin structure without sacrificing its trademark elegance. After pressing, the wine matures for twelve months on its fine lees in old Burgundy barrels, allowing texture and depth to develop while preserving the purity of the fruit. Bottled by gravity without fining or filtration and with only a minimal addition of sulphur, it is a transparent expression of one of the world's oldest living vineyards.