Ferenc Máté was born in Hungary and escaped after the revolution at the age of eleven..
THE WISDOM OF TUSCANY: SIMPLICITY, SECURITY & THE GOOD By Ferenc Mate **Mint** ; Author: Máté, Ferenc ; Genre: Biography & Autobiography ; Publisher: Albatross.Wine Talk: Ferenc Máté
Ferenc Máté, born in Hungary in and raised in British Columbia, is a photographer, sailor and wine producer, and the author of several books, including two memoirs, The Hills of Tuscany () and A Vineyard in Tuscany ().
Máté and his artist and winemaker wife live in a 13th-century friary they restored near Montalcino. Their winery, Máté Wines, produces five bottlings, including Brunello di Montalcino, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah and a Sangiovese-based blend.
Wine Spectator caught up with him in Venice, where he was photographing the city by night.
Wine Spectator: How did you first become interested in wine?
Ferenc Máté: Well, in Hungary, it was a tradition, always drinking wine with meals.
The wine was terrible—this was Soviet Hungary—but always there.
Ference Mate and his wife Candace arrived in Tuscany from New York in the late 1980s, knowing almost no Italian and with only four weeks to find themselves.
I really fell in love with it in the early '80s. My wife, Candace, and I lived in Paris for a year. Every weekend, we'd scour the Michelin red [dining] guide for an inexpensive and good destinati