Like last year, I was lucky enough to be invited along to the Discover Budapest staff party. As most of you know, Treehugger Dan's second location behind the Opera House rents space in the Discover Budapest office. Last year the party was at Ben’s wine cellar. This year, office staff and guides went up on bus 33 from Moritcz Zsigmond korter (the recently extended tram 56 will also take you there) to the Wine Catacombs (Borkatakomba) in Budafok. I have passed by these buildings on the train for years and have <!-- pagebreak -->always had the best intentions to go check out the wine cellars and Torley champagne factory up on the hill.  With a bunch of grumbling and joking we were all outfitted with capes before we entered, making quite a few of our company, who did not want to remove their bags first, look like Quasimodo. The white wine we tasted was forgettable, but that was not the real reason we came. The Wine Catacombs came about originally from a massive limestone quarry that provided stone, to among others, the Parliament building. Hundreds of years as a wine region were ended when the Philoxera disease wiped out the grape vines. Instead of replanting the vines, houses were planted instead. In 1974, the largest wooden wine cask in the world (which is still in use) was made in the Catacombs. The 18 ton, 102000 litre cask was carved beautifully by István Szabó with scenes of the harvest. According to the proprietors, such a large cask is useful to winemakers because all the wine will taste the same as opposed to slight variations from using many different smaller barrels.  This year, one of the winemakers to make use of the cask will be Huba Szeremley.

After giving our capes back, we walked along to the Lics Wine Cellar for a wine tasting and dinner. The two vegetarians were very well cared for, with a selection of organic vegetarian “meats,” and cheeses. The wine is not high end, but good table wine. Of the 6 wines we tried, I liked the Pakozdi chardonnay barrique and the rose (from cabernet sauvignon) the best.