HUNGARY and the WINE

History

FROM THE HISTORY OF THE HUNGARIAN WINE

Ibn-Rostech, the Arabian writer mentions Hungarian vine growing already in his Xth century chronicle. Vine growing and wine production after the Original Settlement of the Magyars was based upon three things: the Greek-Celtic tradition, the Roman tradition, and the knowledge of the Hungarians brought along from the East.

According to charters and documents there was significant vine production around the 1000th year e.g. in Pannonhalma, in Szekszárd and in Buda.

After the Peace Treaty of Trianon, which closed World War I, nearly two thirds of the vineyards got outside our borders. On the other hand, more than the half of the wine consuming population remained here. With the end of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy we lost a big part of our foreign markets.

Though the production in the first years after World War II came near to the average of that before the war, the quality of the vines was going from bad to worse. Due to wrong economic and political decisions wine production touched bottom economically and morally as well...The state wanted to recover vine production with vast expenditure but due to lacking expertise its efforts were not successful. The wrong variety structure, inconvenient territory, badly prepared soil characterised the newly planted ten thousands hectares of vine. Though production and export increased the quality was first of all determined by the unambitious Soviet market. After the change of system in 1990 our wine production suffered another crisis. We lost most of our eastern markets and that led to overproduction. The possibilities and criteria of agricultural production changed.

At last the new vine-growing community act was born. By this, we hope, the process has started that, together with the pretension of the consumers and the knowledge and conscientiousness of the wine producers will create the former legendary fame of the Hungarian wine again...