The bustling market of wine tourism is something that has been expanding exponentially. So when I got an opportunity to combine the two loves of my life: wine and travel, I surely wasn’t planning to say no. Although I got my visa just a day prior to flying it (it deserves a blog post on its own), I headed off to Budapest to attend the 10th IWINETC 2018 Hungary. Hungary is at a cornerstone of both old and new Europe and though Hungarian wines have existed for quite some time now, it has recently come out of the iron curtain of Communism and is slowly but steadily making its impact on the world wine market. Here are my top five reasons on why I absolutely fell in love with my 7-day stay during the festival.

Cruising around the river Danube

IWINETC 2018 Hungary started off with a bang and I mean literally! We cruised along the river Danube that cuts across the historic capital dividing it into the two cities: Buda and Pest. Along with carafes of wine both local and international and a spread of local Hungarian delicacies, the curtain raise for IWINETC 2018 Hungary was a mind-blowing affair. I met up with my fellow participants from India, Arun Verma and Subhash Arora along with a host of wine writers from across the world. But my favourite moment on the cruise was observing the old city through my glass of Champagne as the lights got distorted while the wind swirled in my hair.

Hungarian Wines

Let’s put on the #winewriter avataar now. One of my favourite sessions of the conference was the tasting session of the Hungarian wines. Although the world has a preconceived notion of the sweet Tokaji wines coming out from Hungary, it is much more than that. We tried out a flight of eight wines from the different wine producing regions of Hungary and I absolutely fell in love with the Tokaji Aszu ’06 from the Oremus Winery in Tokaj and the Egri Bikaver Aldas ’16 from the Eger region in North-Western Hungary.

Read about the wines of Hungary and my tasting notes from the session

Visiting the Hungarian countryside and vineyards

Although Budapest, the capital of Hungary has become a hot spot for tourists and has been written about quite extensively, we head to the countryside of Hungary in search of the wines. Thr rolling lush green Eastern European countryside is laced with vines of grapes and littered with castles which have been converted into wineries and hotels.

Tokaj

Furmint and Harslevelu are the essence of Tokaj wines and are now working their magic as single varietal dry white. These two grapes are capturing the nuances of Tokaj’s varied vineyards that greatly vary with various volcanic rocks and its soil.

Etyek

Just a stone’s throw away from the capital, Etyek has historically been called as “the wine garden of Budapest”. Given the soils and the grapes it produces, it comes as no surprise that the Etyek-Buda region has a strong sparkling wine tradition and produces some pristine quality sparkling that had us enthralled.

Eger

Eger is located in the North Eastern part of Hungary and is one of the oldest winemaking regions in the country. It started almost a millennia ago, predictably by Christian monks. Although the region has changed Kings and dynasties over the past thousand years, one thing that remains constant is wine. The cool northern climate along with volcanic soils and limestone are the backbone for cultivating the Kekfrankos grape and the famous Egri Bikaver(Bull’s Blood) wine.

Planning a wine tour to Hungary? Check out 2Hungary which offers some lovely wines tours starting from a day and a half to even a week

For the love of Hungarian Food

When wines are close, food is never going to be far away. The food in Hungary is quite varied: Ranging from the simple food that was eaten by the country folk to the sophisticated dishes of the magnificent Austro-Hungarian empire, I absolutely fell in love with the flavours on offer here. From Goulash at the Lazar Equestrian Park to Pink Pork Medallions, Hungary is a culinary destination that we are going to be writing about soon.

To new barriers

With Western European Old World Wines having established themselves all over the world, it is time for the Eastern part to do so. One of the major sessions at this year’s IWINETC was dedicated to the new regions of Eastern Europe. These included wines from Moldovia, Transylvania along with wines from Muntenia and Oltenia in Romania which we definitely plan to check out in the coming months.

Our discovery of two of world’s rarely talked about regions in British Columbia and Hungary is something that we definitely plan to talk about and taste this coming year.