Villány, quite frankly

Heumann vineyards in Siklos, Villany

Sun-soaked Villány packs potency into Cabernet Franc but power isn't all that's to be found in this southernmost Hungarian wine region.

Villány (pronounced Vee-lun) was the first wine region in Hungary to be restored after the country left the Soviet bloc. It’s the southernmost of all the regions, and with its hot summers and warm winters has traditionally been the home of big, full-blooded reds. (Although the cold, misty rain and lush vegetation on the days I was there in May last year, as evidenced by the photograph above taken in Siklós, made that fact hard to believe.) Here, across...