Beauty unknown
It was around 2015 when a box of Hungarian wine changed everything, but it all started around 1991. I do remember my first encounter with Hungarian wine – a cheap bottle of Tokaji that my parents drank and the kids secretly sipped. It was not the Tokaji you know, especially if you’re a sommelier or wine lover or have travelled to the best Tokaji producers of Hungary. It was the one, the only one, you could get. A version of wine you could get in the Soviet Union. The one that your parents kept as the deepest, darkest secret and greatest possession. And the one I tried when no one was watching when there was some left in the bottle.
That sip of Tokaji was my start in the wine world. Not bad at all, if you consider that most kids and adults started with an even cheaper wine from Georgia, drinking it like lemonade on a hot day. Scared that I would be caught, I sipped the wine from the bottle. It was sweet as honey, darks as amber. A delightful surprise for an eight-year-old who was allowed to sip dad's Friday night beer foam. After that bitterness, Tokaji was like dessert. A temptation. A sin. A joy. I kept my secret as if I was part of the Scotland Yard team that no one was allowed to find out about. In fact, I kept it so well that I only remembered it now as I am writing this article.
Years passed by, and I started to enjoy wine, moving from sweet to dry versions, as many of us did. Later, my honeymoon was all about Bordeaux, St. Emilion, and Champagne, as were many later trips. Sauternes was on the way, yet it didn't even seem polite to love wine this sweet. During these years, my husband and I have spent summers in Tuscany drinking tannic Tuscans, travelling to California to enjoy single-vineyard wines from small houses, and visiting Lyon to enjoy wines from Burgundy. All that time, Hungarian wines were somewhere in the market, but not successful because who drinks Hungarian wine if you can enjoy a bottle of Burgundy? In Latvia, you can lose your rich friends by bringing them Hungarian wine even though it is fantastic.
When a local importer (in 2015) brought me a box of six Hungarian wines, it just sat there, but every other - Italian, French, Spanish or Austrian –managed to get into the glass first. Not a day went by when that box of six sparkling Hungarians staredat me, begging to be opened, but I just could not do it as all I could think of was the taste of honey. They scared me with their Soviet childhood sweetness and cheapness.
That was until the day I had to write about them. Forced to open and taste them, I prepared myself for a sad day in the office. Sweet, cheap, and plain was all I had in my head. No other wine had ever made me so pessimistic (except the Latvian one known as Riga Champagne). My husband opened the well-chilled bottles, and the journey began. I was prepared for the worst but, surprisingly, I got the best. We smelled, swirled, slurped, spit, and sipped. One by one, those wines charmed me with their finesse, light bubbles, character, tradition, elegance, power, and well-balanced aftertaste. They left me know choice but to fall in love. Two years later, a ticket to Hungary’s wine regions was bought. We travelled, enjoying every single estate we visited, bringing back home as many bottles as one suitcase and common sense allowed us. Hungarian wines are still not welcome in Latvia. Sweet and cheap ones - yes, but the exceptionally elegant – no. You can still lose a friend or two by bringing them a bottle of Hungarian wine instead of French, even if the first one is much better. As for us, we keep our Hungarians at home for special occasions, as there is no other wine like Hungarian.
By Signe Meirane