Hungary – Somló and Sopron

Somló

It rises up, startling in its sudden thereness, from the immense tray-flat basalt plains of the Tapolca Basin north of Lake Balaton. Nicknamed ‘the forgotten hat of God’ by the locals, this 431 m (1,414 ft) high hill is an extinct volcano, its lava slopes eroded by millions of years and rich in volcanic minerals.

We’re in the white-wine region of Balaton and as we stand under the cold drip-drip of a giant cherry tree, the tiniest OEM (the equivalent of PDO) in...