The workings of our winery are defined by the cyclic nature of both the grapes and the wine tourism. We’ve done our best to align our workflow, moments, energy and ourselves as well with these two major pillars of circumstance.
Thanks to all that, the years we leave behind don’t really stand out from each other so we try to define new goals and ideas as a new annual goal every time. Perhaps doing this can help our ordinary days to become a little more exciting.
So let’s see how 2025 went for us.

​We’ve opted not to write up an annual harvest summary this year but this is still the most important thing to start with here.
This year’s harvest had started much earlier than in the past. Last year, we made the decision that we want to process our grapes ourselves, something we used to hire the Hétszőlő winery to do before this year. In order to place this process into our own hands, we had to make significant sacrifices: we’ve removed the guest accomodation furniture from the larger wing of our cellar – we can’t host guest events down there anymore – and we’ve also renovated the wing a little bit. All that in order to make room for our brand new pressing machine along with a few other minor implements and other machines.
And so, we started our harvest season with a lot of excitement and some hesitation. After a few initial technical difficulties and learning curves everything proceeded as smoothly as it could.

​Thanks to the Cserés couple – Laci and Ildi – healthy and well ripened grapes welcomed us in the vineyard, enabling us to gather the first batch for our first dry wines of the vintage. 3 of these new wines (Furmint, Kövérszőlő, Zéta) currently rest in barrels. The semidry Sárgamuskotály wine is waiting its turn in steel containers to be rolled out as the first wine to be bottled from the year. The latter type also yielded 2 other versions, namely a semisweet and a late-harvest sweet wine.
The botrytis fungus had made its presence known quite early – as early as the middle of September – and thanks to the optimal weather conditions the process of aszúification began at an alarmingly quick rate. By the end of the month, there weren’t many unaffected grapes at all which was, of course, great news for us! Looking at this incredibly fast aszú process, we wasted no time and started picking the aszú grapes which will yield a very sizable quantity of Aszú wine. After we’ve successfully picked all the aszú grapes by hand from the vines, we’ve basically „whole-pressed” 80-90% of the aszú clusters. These wines will most likely have a sugar level of around 300-400 g/l and we are mostly likely set for a sweet Szamorodni wine too. We’ve decided to purchase a small batch of Kabar grape as well which is currently aging in barrels – hopefully it reaches a quality that enables it to be fully bottled as a Kabar wine.
We headed into this harvest thinking „well, it’d be nice to make a lot of different kinds of wine” because most of our previous wines had sold out almost completely and our storage has been increasingly growing in free capacity.
Fortunately this vintage has truly spoiled us in a great way. Expect some dry wines, some Szamorodni, Aszú and also a rarely seen wine type, the Fordítás wine to come with a 2025 vintage label. Here’s to a vintage never worse than this one!

​This year’s professional wine industry awards are essentially completely identical to last year’s. We decided to compete with two of our 2022 sweet wines, a 2024 dry and semisweet wine for the WineLovers WineAwards competition. The former two wines managed to win gold medals in the tasting competition while the latter two wines were granted bronze medals. The latter wines had got into the tasting jury’s glasses straight after being bottled. Today, they taste even better.
Our wines also performed really well on the thematic tasting tests from Vince Magazine. Almost all of them landed in the top quarter of the competition.

​The wine lover of our modern time can easily rate and review the service they received or the wine they purchased. The places for this are usually online platforms like our webshop, our Google company profile or other booking platforms. In tourism – and in wine tourism specifically – the most relevant of these platforms is most likely Tripadvisor. We’re proud to say that we’ve received the Travellers’ Choice award in 2025, just like we have every year before. We hope that this proves to be a valuable indicator to anyone who wants to visit Tokaj and the region and wishes to enjoy an atmospheric wine tasting program, or even a visit to the cellar and the vineyard.

​The largest renovation project of Tokaj’s downtown area is still ongoing since at least one and a half year. It comes with a lot of dust, noise and all sorts of temporary traffic changes in the city. We’re trying our best to alleviate the latter issue by updating Waze’s and Google Maps’ navigation data accordingly, although it’s not really our job to do that. Despite that, we think it’s a simple gesture not just towards people who happen to visit the town, but it’s also helpful for the local businesses and townsfolk.
By the end of the year, the downtown of Tokaj looks better and better. Many scaffoldings have come down, some covers removed, and the green islands on the street are becoming populated with trees and other greenery.
We’ve been on the receiving end of this renovation for around 2 years now and we can’t wait for spring to arrive, so we can finally enjoy the results of the project.

​We don’t want to miss out on all the new stuff either. So this year, we want to keep up with all the renovations around here, and are working hard to beautify our bathroom area near the winery. We’re also planning to redesign our two guest entrances a little bit. These are our year starting missions before the nice weather arrives and we’ll eventually be flooded with visitors.
We can’t wait to see you in a new Tokaj in 2026!

​Kata, Dalma, Andi, Gábor and Foltos

In 2024, the downtown of Tokaj had begun undergoing a grand refurbishing of „historical value”. The most impressionable progress of this construction are to be observed in the coming year of 2025. Lots of streets and buildings are getting completely new and refurbished looks which – hopefully –later become equipped with exciting new functions and services to satisfy the curiosity of the visiting tourists and the locals. A lot of people might scare upon hearing these news, mostly because of all the noise and dust that comes with construction projects like these.
​But we think otherwise.
We’ll tell you and show you why!

​You see the ongoing construction process for yourself today. The entire section of the downtown area that’s undergoing the renovations is completely walkable on set pathways. After 3:30 PM and on weekends, the construction noise also dies down to a quiet.
Only those who visit now can check this little transition period for this small town. It’s the perfect opportunity to check it out and then see the changes to come a few months from now.
It might be bothersome or even annoying to some, but there is something to be treasured about seeing the town in this state. There’s a lot of cool things around, like construction vehicles and other interesting solutions to the construction project. It’s worth to observe all these things with patience, as with change truly comes progress after all.
The shorelines along the Bodrog and Tisza rivers remain untouched for the duration of the construction as they are pretty far away from the main downtown area. These paths are perfect for a daytime or evening walk and include great scenery. The many wonderful and welcoming cellars, restaurants, confectioneries and cafés of Tokaj are open to all.
Keep track of the project for yourself!
See you soon.

We’ve managed to somehow slow down a bit during the holiday period, allowing us to think over all the things that happened in the past year. What kind of vintage was it? How well did we achieve our goals and objectives? What else do we have left to do in 2025?
Our usual retrospective writeup and short report follows.

​The vintage
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The most important bit is always the grape. The vineyard. These are the foundational pillars of our winery and we can safely say this is the most stressful part of the whole thing. During this plant’s entire lifetime we’re constantly exposed to the whims of the elements, forcing us to adapt to them, but never quite being able to eliminate all the casualties the weather could cause.
Laci and Ildi – as a married couple – have been tending to the vineyard with extreme precision for several years now. Thanks to their diligence and hard work, along with constant protection of all grapevines, we were able to harvest beautiful, healthy grapes at the end of August for our dry and semidry wines. A month later most of the weather elements turned out to be favourable, so by the end of October we had collected a large amount of aszú berries finishing the harvest with a Szamorodni and an Aszú wine in turn.
We’re quite happy with how one of the earliest harvests turned out this year and the new wines are clean, fine and promising.

Accolades
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At the start of last year, a great achievement was bestowed upon our family. Gyula Várhelyi (82), founder of Hímesudvar was granted the title Decorated Citizen of Tokaj. He deserves this award for his decades worth of cultural work along with the historical research he has carried out in his retirement years. His active lifestyle in the town still allows for a bit of time around the cellar and so most of the cleanliness around the estate can be credited to „Grandpa Gyula”.
The winning of an outstanding achievement for the whole team remains to be the Tripadvisor Travelers’ Choice Awards, granted on one of the world’s most popular tourism websites. The main team of Kata, Andi, Dalma and new arrival Gábor was assisted on the most frequented days by the helpful „little” Andi (a legal doctor today), Anna (in marketing) and Janka (painter). The Worker of the Year award, however, yet again goes to Foltos – in the midst of extreme competition at the top level, of course. We’ll be writing up a little something about Foltos on the 1st of next year. Every single member of the team utilises their hospitality, kindness, their best smile or their loudest purr to make sure all the domestic and far travelled guests enjoy their time to the fullest at our winery.

Wine competitions
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We rarely ever participate in these competitions since we believe the best judge of them all is the buyer. We sell all our wines on the spot so everyone gets a chance to taste the goods before purchasing and we don’t feel the need to constantly prove our quality with badges. On the other hand, we usually don’t have very large batches of new wines, so by the time the results of a competition get published, our wines will have usually been sold out. Sometimes, we get invited to a certain category which we don’t even have a fresh wine for, so there’s that.
But with all that said, we still took our chances at a few of them: we’ve received invitations from Vince Magazine, Debreceni Borozó and WLWA, so we sent them a few samples to compete. The results are reassuring and inspiring, since the competing opposition consists of very strong, capable, fine wines and our wines managed to reach high spots on these samplings. The main takeaway for us regarding these competitions, is that even a qualified team of wine jurors quite like our wines, giving us a perhaps more objective view on where we stand in the country’s wine scene at large.

​Other things and events
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Despite having multiple floodings over the course of spring, we still tried to build ourselves up and extend our horizons. We’re always thinking on what other novelties we can bring into our repertoire to keep giving our visitors a fresh experience.
The ever-expanding bicycle network around the Tokaj region brought in more and more two-wheeled visitors to our winery. We’ve installed a cute little bicycle parking spot in the front of our entrance, giving room for up to 5 bikes.
We’ve long supported local businesses and their artisan products, after all, we’re doing the same thing. Alongside the honey, syrups and gin we’ve picked up the beautifully made goose liver products of Royal Paté. Mainly because a lot of connoisseurs love to talk about how goose liver and Tokaji aszú compliment one another perfectly and we’ve always been in trouble when someone asks where they could try such a pate around this town. So now, Hímesudvar has it too.
Along with all the gourmet stuff we also like to have some extra goodies and accessories for all the wine lovers out there. We’ve refreshed our supply of Pulltap’s corkscrews with 8 + 2 brand new colours. We even have electric versions of these in stock, if you’re into that type of innovation. If you’d like to surprise someone else – or yourself – with a decorated version, there are also exclusive Swarovski crystal decorated editions of these corkscrews, in 4 different variations. You can find all of these in the webshop here.

​As usual we tried our best to partake in the various local events and programmes with some of our own small little happenings. In spring it’s usually the Tokaj Wine Days or the Harvest Festival that brings a lot of people about but we also took part in Tokaji Pezsgés, the Tokaj Street Music Festival and we’ve even hosted a combined vineyard tour with a lot of other wineries in town. Then there was also a small tasting event in the Fesztiválkatlan venue, we even visited Debrecen for an evening and we illuminated the Bem street for the participants of the Fényes Futás night-time running event.
These are all the popular events that work all year round and these are the ones to choose if one wishes to make their wine experience a more social one as well.

​Plans in 2025
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Our 2025 blueprints are insecurely connected to the renovations going on in Tokaj as we write this. The „Tokaj Old Town Project” is a never-before-seen renovation project and all the troubles of it (dust, noise, road closures) will be sure to be with us for the time to come. The preview plans and the already finished sections look to be promising and neat. The hardware gets refurbished, but we’re mostly interested in what „software” these renovations may bring to the town of Tokaj. Will the new businesses and locales be able to bring in more tourism for the town and generate more attraction for the wine giant? We’ll wait and see, but what’s sure is that the town needs a fresh and modern look along with a lively crowd to visit as well.

​We say thanks and express great gratitude to many other colleagues and family members, without whom this small business could not function as it does on a daily basis. So big thanks to Beáta Borbély, my partner who endures my workaholic behaviour, Mara Várhelyi for all the translated content (translator’s note: that’s me!) Gergely Makai at Hétszőlő Winery, the harvest team and the specialists, the couriers, the suppliers.
We’ll continue this constant self-expansion in 2025 as well; we’re working on planting some new grapevines after a long time of not having done so, and we’ve got some cellar expansion ideas to finish downstairs too. We’re always thinking on how to stay neat and do better.
Our winery has welcomed around 13.000 visitors in the year of 2024. This is not only a clear indicator of success for us, but also reminds us of the responsibility we hold. We can take inspiration from both sentiments, reminding us that it’s worth doing all this and doing it well, despite all the hardships.

translated by Mara Várhelyi

​Recently, when we showed up someplace with our scanners, we often got asked: „Can it see underground?” Well, we can say we’re capable of a lot of things, so we decided to try this out too. Why is it worth it to delve underground? See Novabird’s article about it.

​In Tokaj, wine is a fundamental source of sustenance and therefore, a frequent conversation topic too. With how it is around here, wine and water brought us together with the owner of Hímesudvar Winery, Péter Várhelyi. There were times we fished for perch out on the Tisza river, or discussed the state of the wine region next to a bottle of fine wine.
This time, however, our relationship sailed to different waters. Péter joined the camp who always asks the same question: „what do you do exactly?” and after listening to our short explanation, he requested us to do the same analysis at Hímesudvar. We were happy to accept the assignment.
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The laser, the virtual key to your cellar
We began the explanation at the most basic level. You’ve got the red pointy laser rangefinder thing right? That little device that fits into the palm of your hand and tells you how many millimeters are between you and the wall. Well, imagine one just like that, but much smarter: our largest laser scanner scatters its red dots to all directions, around 2 millions of them each second. Basically, it creates a full 3D image in a 100-meter radius in the span of a few hours.
With this kind of device, it’s not just the ceiling you can measure. You can also check the distance between the cellar tunnels and the surface, you can double-check your wine barrel’s potential spot, you could even identify where the ventillation shafts end on the surface level as well.

​The reality of the cellar, virtually
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The goal of this project was for the complete world of Hímesudvar to move into the virtual space – sadly without wine but with the utter precision of millimeters. This means we’ve discovered every nook and cranny of the cellar, even that which is unseen to the naked eye. This is how virtual Hímesudvar was made: a precise, detailed 3D model, which isn’t just useful to its current day inhabitants, but could prove useful in future winemaking efforts as well.
It also records the present, which later on could be compared with other measurements and analyses, indicating changes in structure. For future construction projects it could prove invaluable to engineers, providing information about the exact details of the entire estate. These kinds of details would’ve come in really handy a quarter of a century ago and the photos made of the cellar collapse also support this.

​The entire summary allows us to see the exact positioning of the tunnels and see it compared to the surface buildings. It’s great for measuring where to expand and what distance is between each of the cellar’s wings.

Can it see underground?
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And to answer the age-old question: can the scanner truly see underground? Well, no. But if you do have a cellar and we’ve run it through our scanners, we will show you the result and you’ll find yourself saying: YES! It really does.
We’ll see what Péter’s creativity makes out of the results, but one thing’s for sure: that cellar’s virtual model is on his computer, which can be viewed and inspected with millimeter precision at any given time.
And what else could I say? In this cellar, every single millimeter counts – because this is the source of the best wine Tokaj could offer.

​Nowadays it’s common for many guests and visitors to take super high quality pictures and make videos using their phones, which all help to make a certain place more popular. This new, modern, visually impressive 3D image technology could be useful in similar marketing tactics.

​If You have any ideas that you want realised with the help of such a device, take a look at our case studies here and feel free to contact us!

Years in Tiszalúc
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Our father, Gyula Várhelyi was born on June 3rd, 1942 about 40km away from Tokaj, in a small town called Tiszalúc located on the bank of the Holt-Tisza. He spent his childhood and finished elementary school here. At this point he could only gaze at the far-off mountain lines of Tokaj with admiration. He probably didn’t know that he would end up spending most of his life at the foot of these mountains later on, working on his own winery and tending his own vineyards.
He graduated at Földes Ferenc High School in Miskolc, then continued his education at Bishop’s Theology College in Eger, later on the Kölcsey Ferenc Teaching School in Debrecen and Bessenyei György Teaching School in Nyíregyháza. As an adult he graduated to be a folk cultivator and a librarian.

​The Taktaharkány Years

In 1968 he married Margit Juhász, with whom they created a family in her town, Taktaharkány. In 1969 their son Péter was born and 5 years later their daughter, Kata. In these few years, as a group effort and in joined work with their in-laws and friends, they had constructed the first two-story semi-detached house in the village.
In the meantime, he worked in the city library of Szerencs, and then the bookstore in the same town, with one foot in the wine region already. His colleagues at the time piqued his interests towards winemaking and viticulture.
The first visible result of this interest was the purchase of their very first vineyard in Monok, 1978. They would travel there with the kids every weekend by bus or train to get more acquainted with the art of viticulture.

The Tokaj Years
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In 1980, Gyula Várhelyi became the manager of the House of Culture in Tokaj.
After this short period of bouncing between jobs and places, being a bit tired, he reevaluated the wine idea. Unafraid of change, they left the barely lived-in family home and the vineyard in Monok, and left for the town of Tokaj.
In 1983, using the money they received from the sale of the house in Taktaharkány, they purchased an extremely ruined and desolate piece of real estate on Bem street, which was described to be the  former hunting house of a certain János Szapolyai – a former Hungarian ruler. This small estate is now known as Hímesudvar by lovers of wine world-wide. With friends and family, next to a full-time job, they tried to renovate the building and make it at least livable – which they did, and moved in soon after. In order for them to spend their non-existent free time a bit better, they decided to purchase a plot of land – about a quarter hectar – on a hill above the high school, on an area called Donáth-vineyard. This was how they succeeded at the first law of Tokaj: „If in Tokaj your home be, an owner of grapes must you be.”

​In 1988 came another workplace change. Szerencs had charmed him back, where they appointed him Executive Manager of the nationally acclaimed and relevant Szerencs Cultural Centre and Library, built upon the remains of the newly renovated Rákóczi Castle.
In the meantime, he created another similarly sized plot of land in the Nyulas-dűlő (literally: Bunny-vineyard), then traded one of his local friends for yet another small area in the Malomfeli vineyard, fully forming the entire 3.5 hectar land that we as a family call our own.
In 1991, after constant rethinking and reconsideration and due to the duties of his workplace, he slowly taught the winemaking arts and techniques to his son, Péter, moving the more challenging aspects of the winery to him. Kata joined in later, and the two of them took control of the small estate.
Up until 2002, he was known as the „castle captain” as his colleagues called his occupation. At this point he retired but continued to live a very active life.

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Cultural and Community Life
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Because of his religious creed, he had always believed that building and forming the community around him was vital to life. Along with his colleagues, they would create all sorts of study groups, host exhibits and language events, or even organise outdoor games and activities. He played an important role in the creation of schedules for the Tokaj Summer Culture Site, contributing to the bustling cultural life of the city by coming up with creative, exciting events.
He was a founding member of the Circle of Museum Enthusiasts, the Tokaj Eszencia Friend Community and the Tokaj Value Repository Board. For decades he took part in the works of the Bettering the City Organisation.
In the year of the millennium, he received the most important award in his area of work from the minister of the National Cultural Heritage; the Folk Cultivation Award.

Days in the Now
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„Gyula bácsi” is still an active and contributing citizen of Tokaj’s community and its cultural life. For the 950-year celebration of the city, he worked on the creation of the event schedule and was a presenting member of the informative conference held about remembering Tokaj.
He has a great interest in the old history of Tokaj, and in its religious past, working as a sort of local history researcher and a public writer. His writings are usually published in the rows of the Tokaj News, the Honismeret national paper and the Kazincy Ferenc Society’s yearbooks.
Above all this, he still has time to contribute to the family business, constantly and tirelessly working to make Hímesudvar neater and nicer, along with helping the younger people of the family to thrive.
The Honorary Citizen award isn’t given to those who succeed in a private business, but rather to one who has given much of his life to the bettering of his community and city. A long career of cultural work isn’t simply enough as well, one has to have a tireless and selfless attitude to cultural and community work. Gyula Várhelyi gave all this and more. At his workplaces, his colleagues loved working with him and his superiors praised his work and were proud to have him there. In his retirement days he still dedicates a lot of time to the interested and colourfully accepting communities of today. Dreaming up Hímesudvar, he created the foundations of an exceptional piece of Tokaj value, which proves as a reference point and shows the way to many adventurous wine-lovers and local citizens alike.
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We wish him a long life!