Lake Balaton: SKIZO Borház
You know it’s been a good day when I can walk from a winery on a hill (Laposa Birtok) along a trail that was wayyyy off the beaten track, through tiny villages, to arrive at my next destination...a super cool winery bar!!
I got lost on my way, my GPS couldn’t find me so I was relying on my compass on my phone. Gotta love navigating by compass...that is until a little older Hungarian woman with a large walking stick found me. I loved navigating by her even more. She spoke zero English and yet she walked me along a path I would have never found that led to her house and then she pointed her finger in the direction that was exactly right where I needed to go. Once again proof that Angels are everywhere.
I walked on just loving the tiny villages I was passing through until I ended up at this awesome wine bar. I love love this place. Located in what was once a traditional Badacsonytördemic house, Skizo Wine House is the offering of young local winemaker Balázs and his wife, Réka Sike. And yes they do indeed produce some lovely vino!
SKIZO BORHÁZ (SKIZO Wine House)
info@skizobor.hu-n.
Location: 8263 Badacsonytördemic Szent István utca 24.
Balázs and his wife, Réka
In reading through the SKIZO Borhas website, it’s clear the founder Balázs is a believer in FLOW. Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, considered one of the co-founders of positive psychology, was the first to identify and research flow. (If you’re not sure how to pronounce his name, here’s a phonetic guide: “Me high? Cheeks sent me high!”). Csikszentmihalyi’s studies led him to conclude that happiness is an internal state of being, not an external one. His popular 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience is based on the premise that happiness levels can be shifted by introducing flow.
“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times . . . The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile”
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
Here is an excerpt from https://skizobor.hu/en/pages/rolunk (ABOUT US). I’ve used google translate which has some challenges with Hungarian yet this is a lovely story and worth sharing.
Rólunk
I became a forester, a technician, and then a gardener, a student. It so happened that what I was listening to and about grapes and wine started to engage me. It is important to emphasize that it was already possible to taste it at that time, so the world of wine opened a new world for me, both sensually and metaphysically. It was during these years that the science of positive psychology came to come up with a definition of the FLOW experience that they could have even named after me and my friends by observing my university activities. “The experience that increases motivation to the maximum” with which the concept characterizes the literature has filled my days.
The drift first took me to the southern shore of Lake Balaton, as a leader in the viticulture sector, in the middle of a 150-hectare vineyard. I loved it, but after all, the promised winery wasn’t built up and my floating-lid wine lab set up in the small warehouse no longer satisfied my passion. I was captivated by the opportunity to return home and winemaking on a farm scale. I moved back to Badacsonytördemic, where I grew up and put it in a family circle as a child. I started working in a Great Winery, first in viticulture and then in winemaking as well. It was not possible to unfold here. I gave it my all. Great wines were born under my hands and the hands of my colleague. However, in spite of all our thoughts revolving around the vineyards and cellars, our wines made with fearless care did not end up in the glasses of understanding people. FLOW stuck with this failure as well. I came up with the idea: Yes, you need your own brand!
That's how SKIZO became in 2010. Special trip design, novelty, perfect wines, flowing energy. It was a fairy tale, a few months later the parallel flow brought Attila Tálos to us, who wanted to add SKIZO to the offer of the Wine Company. So it was. We have evolved.
In 2014, my founding colleague left both businesses, me, but the momentum carried on the momentum. This is where Réka, my wife, came in, who kept the soul in me and reminded her perfectly in the discouraging moments, Balázs, this is your life for you!
In 2016, we bought the old cellar, which has been in use in the village for 6 years. We planned to install it by September 2017, for the demanding processing, bottling and storage of the already large volume.
According to Csíkszentmihályi, “activity rewards from within, success is an experience, therefore it is not burdensome”. That's how we made it, Balázs Sike's Cellar was physically assembled
From 2018, in addition to our popular SKIZO series, our attention will be focused more and more on wines from our special, increasingly naturally cultivated and processed grapes. Emphasizing the uniqueness of these wines, we created our Balázs Sike Cellar series.
Visitors to Badacsony and us can get to know us, our wines and the Flow experience in an organized way on our wine terrace and in our vaulted tasting room, which was built 200 years ago.
