Your Guide to Pálinka History: check in with Pálinka Experience Budapest
We’ve told you about many of the exciting services at New York Palace; there’s New York Café, the White Salon Restaurant, and Anantara Spa which are all available to the general public. But now we’ll show you something available exclusively to Hotel guests.
There’s a range of experiences and outings on offer from the Hotel, and many of these have a culinary theme. And when it comes to Hungarian flavors, we’ll soon arrive at a distinct and wildly popular traditional drink, locally distilled pálinka.
Pálinka Experience Budapest is set up in ever-bustling Király utca, an opeeration part museum, part shop and bar. This is where we come from the Anantara to become immersed in the world of pálinka.
First point on our agenda is to síp a neat little welcome drink, setting the tone for our guided museum tour.
I am certain that native Hungarians too can brush up their pálinka lore here, but the entire program is of course available in English.
What makes pálinka so special? It even has its own law to regulate it.
The Law on Pálinka prescribes and regulates exactly the denomination, as well as every phase of manufacture that is particular to the drink. There are also clauses regulating pálinka distribution and even a National Pálinka Council.
According to the law, genuine pálinka must meet no less than six special requirements:
- the spirit is distilled from 100% fruit, with no additives of any sort (eg. honey);
-the fruit must be grown and produced entirely in Hungary, including garden and wild fruits, grape scumble and aszú grape scumble, whereas imported fruit does not qualify for pálinka;
-fruit and grape scumble must be processed, matured and bottled entirely in Hungary;
-minimum alcohol percentage for pálinka is 37,5% v/v, whereas a maximum threshold is capped at 86% v/v, thus levels over 50% are not uncommon;
-the term pálinka is to be denoted exclusively as such (excluding palinca and other nonstandard spelling variants);
-the denomination pálinka can only be used by Hungary (as well as four Austrian counties approved to use the term barackpálinka for appropriately crafted apricot brandies).
To kick off, we are served a rustic platter, perfectly balanced to complement the beverages. Venison kolbász, rustic Hungarian kolbász, cheese, both sweet and spicy Hungarian peppers, tomato, cottage cheese körözött, and fresh home-baked bread are all included.
Then comes a carefully composed lineup of drinks.
After drinking our way through this array of pálinka, we’re more clear about which fruit we most prefer, and how open we are to the more striking flavors.
Agárdi Pálinkafőzde Distillery
In the Agárd region’s lakeside, there is a farm surrounded by orchards of Morello cherries, apricot, sweet plums, black cherry and various fragrant and aromatic fruits. For over 20 years, this has been a distillery for premium quality Agárd fruit pálinkas.
Healthy fruit is converted to pálinka using an optimal and fine-tuned procedure; however, this drive to top quality limits the volume of output:
Agárdi fruit pálinkas are produced in limited batches, and shelved in numbered bottles.
Their efforts have earned a plethora of Hungarian and international recognition. Led by master pálinka distiller Tibor Vértes, Agárdi has brought home the “National Grand Prize” title for the 10th time running, at the Destillata 2023 competition. Their entry evaluations have elevated Agárdi to the “Innermost circle”, celebrated among the all-time greatest pálinka masters.
At this point, the tasting is far from over.
Our drink is based on Williams pear pálinka, and surprising as this may seem, the fruit flavor lends itself nicely to an ice-and-tonic combination.
Tweaks and decorations can be an elaborate and seemingly unending matter. A contributing factor might be that we are in fact already about 6 drinks into the experience.
At Pálinka Experience bar, there are approximately 100 different variants of pálinka available, so if we’re still thirsty, there are plenty more options to consider. But that will go beyond the scope of this package program.
In any case, we will not be leaving empty-handed, of course. There is a three-piece gift box courtesy of Agárdi distilleries included in the deal.
For more information, contact: [email protected]
