Holdvölgy, Hungarian for Valley of the Moon, is an absolutely thrilling discovery for Justerini & Brooks. The likes of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rhone and Barolo might be the most popular and fastest-developing areas of our portfolio but every now and again something unique and individual comes along that is just too good to miss out on. Holdvölgy started off as a heart-felt gesture, a birthday gift of vineyards from owner Pascal Demko's mother to her husband that has now ballooned into the most exciting wine project in Hungary. Pascal was entrusted by his mother to find vines for his father in Tokaji, where he had long worked, and during the course of his search became enthralled by the quality and potential of the region. He ended up with 25ha of vines in the commune of Mad, wherein lies all of the originally classified Crus of the region. Pascal and his team, with his fabulous estate of volcanic soil based vineyards, are making some of the most precise and quality-driven wines in Hungary today. The keys to quality here are an acute understanding of the varying terroirs in the famous Mad basin, hand-tending and harvesting the vines and a careful parcel by parcel selection. They use small steel tanks to accommodate the separate vinification of 22 different parcels across 7 separate vineyard Crus. Only wild yeasts are used, the dry wines are fermented and aged mainly in steel with some used oak, whilst the sweet wines are aged in a mix of French and Hungarian oak in their vast 2km network of century-old cellars split over three levels.