I hesitated to write about it. It’s because some months ago I decided to be more positive about the “poor” Hungarian wine industry. Then I came across Juhász Testvérek’s Kékfrankos (or was it the Bikavér??) from Eger and I was furious. It was simply outrageous. But I calmed down. Then I couldn’t resist (Eurobor) Tűzkő Kékfrankos on discount sale at In vino Veritas á propos de Wine Wednesday. After all, their Sauvignon Blanc 2007 was OK, Renana 2007 not so much and Domb Cuvée, well, it was not bad at all. I mean, readers like to read beautifully written stories about great wines, vintages, winemakers and so on. And these readers are served well. Most people like stories more than the truth. And the truth is that about 99% of Hungarian wines is rubbish. And not just the bulk wines and deservedly unfamous former socialist corporations’ products from the lowest shelves of the supermarkets, but some wines cheered by wine drinkers and tolerated by the wine press and the blogsphere. I don’t care about popularity and visitor statistics and I’m not bound by anything else either and that’s what I like about having my own blog. Here I can remark that the EUR 3-4 or so that I spent on this wine (at half price) was very badly spent, not considering the annoying trip to In Vino Veritas across the city. Every single winemaker lately sooner or later starts to talk to me about how new world winemakers (sic!, like all of them) are cheating and producing cheap wines and Hungarians should be more sophisticated than buying those imported alcoholic juices. Here in Hungary our problems are always caused by someone else, it’s never us, there’s always an obscure global conspiracy to blame. This sentiment is further fuelled by state politics of course. We are mud-wrestling with ourselves. It’s time for consumers and winemakers to wake up. If Fodor Béla can do it, why couldn’t anyone else?
May 8th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
There are major problems with the Hungarian wine industry, including sometime ridiculous pricing and an unwillingness to pull together for the sake of the industry (actually, that problem is not confined to the wine industry!). But I think you are far too harsh in saying that 99% of Hungarian wine is rubbish. Apart from its famous dessert wines, the country actually produces some world class reds, in my view, and I am always happy to promote that message, despite some of the issues which exist.
Please keep up the great work on your site.
May 8th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I fully agree with you. Thank you for your comment, I really appreciate it! And I’d be glad to read more about the wines you liked.
About the 99%. I know it’s shockingly high and I know it sounds like a figure that just popped out of my head like that. So I did a quick math (with very rough estimates!). Hungary’s yearly production is almost 4 million hectoliters per year from 80 000 hectares (that yield is btw just below the EU average). That’s equivalent of roughly 500 million bottles of wine!
I’ve been sampling the wines for a couple of years now, although I reckon there’s so much more to see and taste. I’ve been to hypermarkets as well as to specialist stores (many of them), visited wine regions (many of them) and I found no more than maybe 100 producers (smaller cellars and larger wineries) on my radar whose aim is to produce quality wines. On average let’s assume 50 000 bottles yearly production (certainly not more) for these 50 wineries (many of them have less than 10 hectares) which adds up to 5 000 000 bottles of quality wine a year, which is roughly 1% of Hungary’s yearly output. The conclusion is twofold:
- Either there’s a huge reserve of good quality wines out there completely unnoticed by wine merchants or the quality wines’ share is really that low.
- Rubbish is really a harsh expression especially if applied to the result of someone’s hard work. I will not withdraw what I wrote but I must state that by rubbish I meant quality below standard, i.e. scoring less than 4- according to the rating system I am using.