The letters written regularly by Kelemen Mikes in exile in the middle of the 18th century to his imaginary aunt can also be used as a source for ethnology, historical ethnology and economic history. They made important observations and comparisons regarding many areas of everyday life in Transylvania and the inner Székelyföld (Szeklerland), and the material culture of Turkey and Asia Minor. His ideas on the reform of economic affairs, often in advance of his age, were intended to arouse the attention of farmers and nobles in Transylvania and Hungary. However the economic policy of the Viennese court was not yet ripe for the protection of taxpayers in face of the shackles of feudalism or for the introduction of economic reforms, or even for attention to Kelemen Mikes’s proposals. The evaluation of his work from the angle of economic ethnology and the history of viticulture and viniculture places it in a new light and adds a new dimension to the schematic picture and opinion of it formed by historians and literary historians.