Wines at 50% discount!!! *

Torkos Csütörtök (Gluttonous Thursday), Borszerda (Wine Wednesday) and now Nyitott Pince Napok (Open Cellars Days). Great expectations of cheap food/wine, great initiatives. But do they deliver?

Torkos Csütörtök does, absolutely. Provided that you’re well informed well in advanced about the upcoming event and you’re one of the few lucky ones who manage to get a table in a decent restaurant.

Borszerda, not so much. My experience was that Hungarians did not flood the restaurants on this Wednesday to drink at half price but many (including myself) ran into the sale of unwanted stock at selected retailers.

Nyitott Pince Napok is another great idea. Average people like mylsef can meet the winemaker in his cellar, have a good conversation with him while sampling some of his best wines at half price. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

The said reality is that the few wineries I contacted informed me that their chief winemaker either will not be present during our visit, or they’re not selling 3 wines as they’re supposed to at half price, but with 15%-30% discount only (and the most simple ones, of course), or both. One who claimed to participate with 50% discount didn’t answer to my booking request 3 days past. No wonder one gets suspicious. According to the organisers’ website, the pre-requisits for participants are that i) the chief winemakers be at the cellar and visitors shall, if they would like to, be guided through the cellar ii) they must sell 3 selected wines at minimum 50% discount. Now, I went through the list of wineries (available for download on the association’s website) and their terms of participation and very few of them actually comply with these requirements. Those enthusiastic wineries who indicated their participation early in the first round seem to be the biggest losers. Apparently late comers joined the event by not fully complying with the requirements, but they were welcome anyhow. I think that this behavior is not just unfair (with consumers and with the other wineries) but a very good mirror picture of Hungarian business culture and especially of the agriculture’s and viticulture’s ever complaining socialites.

I would like to express my respect for those few wineries who intend to comply with the terms and conditions.

Click here to see all participants and their conditions.

*read the rest, loser!