great buys: Hungary beyond Tokaj
Hungarian wine: did you know...
• Hungarian Zsigmond Teleki helped save wine for the world in the 19th century by breeding the rootstock that enabled European grapevines to resist the destruction caused by the phylloxera bug
• Two-thirds of Hungary’s vineyards grow on volcanic soils
Welcome to Hungary – a country of volcanic hills and natural hot springs, vast plains where cowboys still roam and dense oak forests that cloak the mountain tops. Wine is everywhere, too, deeply ingrained in Hungarian culture.
Increasingly, Hungary is becoming my personal ‘go-to’ for world-class wines, as producers have learned (and continue to learn) to understand vineyards and how to make wines with balance and refinement, gaining value from place, not from overwrought winemaking.
It’s a proud country, and slowly this pride is translating into international awareness – recently the UK became the top export destination for Hungarian wines in bottle, with wines increasingly appearing on merchants’ shelves and restaurant wine lists. Undoubtedly Hungary experienced difficult years during the communist era, when winemaking was all about squeezing every drop from overworked vines; but today the country’s winemakers are firmly back on the right path to a place in our glasses.
If wine drinkers have heard of Hungarian wine, it’s usually Tokaji , or cheap but cheerful ‘Italian lookalike’ whites, especially Pinot Grigio. But Hungary has so much more to offer. The combination of 22 distinct wine regions , each with its own characteristics, and about 180 grape varieties makes it a fascinating country to explore. With more than 58,200ha in production, Hungary ranks eighth in the EU by area planted to vine,
