Masters of Wine Hungary trip (31 August – 5 September)
Image credit: Courtesy of Wines of Hungary and @szmoditsphotography
The genesis of the recent IMW trip to Hungary lies in a journey I took through Hungary’s wine regions in 2019. I was accompanied on these visits by my former mentee, Agnes Csiba-Herczeg (who recently became Dr Csiba-Herczeg after being awarded a PhD on the topic of sustainable wine packaging). Agnes was the perfect guide to the various regions and was clearly known – and admired – by every winemaker we visited. I realised then that she would be the ideal person to organise an IMW visit to the country. And so we began planning.
Originally the trip was due to take place in 2020, but a little thing called Covid intervened, and postponement was inevitable. So it was doubly joyful to see our plans come to fruition at the tail end of summer 2024, when a group of 14 MWs gathered in Budapest on the last day of August to begin their exploration of Hungarian wine regions.
Over the course of five eventful days, we not only enjoyed a morning’s sailing on Lake Balaton and an evening at one of Hungary’s many spas, we also visited many of the country’s key regions, stopping off in Etyek, Balaton and Szekszárd before heading east to Tokaj for a deep dive into both the region’s traditional sweet wines and the drier styles that are helping to shape its modern image. Along the way, we enjoyed seminars on a variety of topics, and tasted a diverse range of wines, exploring the differences between the Bikavér blends of Eger and Szekszárd as well as the appeal of Villány’s Cabernet Francs. Whites were a focus of the earlier part of the trip, and we enjoyed tastings of bottlings from the Upper Pannon and Danube wine regions as well as the varied terroirs of Balaton.
MW students past and present other than Agnes helped to shape the trip, too. Sue Tolson, a Stage 3 candidate, set the scene by providing detailed insights into Hungary’s indigenous grape varieties. Former student Elod Adam delivered a magisterial presentation on the country’s volcanic soils and the wines shaped by these terroirs.
This trip would not have been quite as magical as it was without the huge amount of time, thought and effort Agnes put into ensuring that every moment not only provided terrific insights into Hungary’s wines, but also ran smoothly and efficiently (down to the pillows and blankets provided to each MW to make us comfortable on the lengthy coach journeys between regions).
The generosity of Hungary’s winemakers, and of the country’s generic body, Wines of Hungary, was also noteworthy – so many thanks to all involved in organising and hosting a trip that proved absolutely that the best things in life are worth waiting for.