Enjoying Hungarian wines in Budapest Wine Festival
Soon after arriving in Hungary, we had a chance to visit the yearly Budapest Wine Festival, that was arranged this year from Sep 7th to Sep 10th in Buda Castle terraces. It was the first larger scale wine festival for us, and a wonderful experience. Buda Castle offers an awesome venue for this huge festival, that was arranged 26th time already. Tens of thousands of visitors gather to the festival to enjoy wines, food, concerts and the atmosphere.
Tickets to the festival cost 3200 HUF, so around 10,5 euros per day, and a four-day festival pass can be bought with 6000 HUF (20 €). Ticket includes a beautiful crystal wine tasting glass in a fabric holder, that can be carried around you neck. The festival is cash free, which means that all the purchases are done using a special FestiPay card or contactless PayPass bank cards. FestiPay was working perfectly; you just load money on the card in the FestiPay stall (with cash that’s free, if using a card 200 HUF is charged) and after that paying in the wine and food stalls is super fast and easy. There is a deposit of 500 HUF for the card, and you get it, as well as the remaining value, back when returning the card
Around 200 wineries are present in the festival, introducing their wines from small wooden stalls. Altogether much more than 1000 different wines were available for tasting, so it’s of course not possible to get to now all of them. So the first thing for us was to select couple of wine regions that we would like to get to know better.
Since we were anyway planning to head to Eger region after leaving Budapest behind, it was a natural choice to meet wine producers from there. Eger is home to the legendary ”Bull’s blood” red wine Egri Bikaver, but also a wide selection of fresh white wines and roses come from the region.
Another pick was then the famous Tokaj region with its white desert wines. Tokaji Aszu is a world famous sweet wine, probably the best known of all Hungarian wines. The quality of the wine is determined by the amount of grapes the wine contains. The higher the amount, the better the quality.
In case you are not familiar with Hungarian wine industry, it is good idea to gather some background info before heading to the festival. Even if the country is relatively small, there are 22 different wine areas, and Hungary is the 16th largest wine producer in the world. It is said that the climate and the soil are perfect for wine making, and in each of the wine areas there is a different micro-climate that affects the type and taste of the wines.
In Budapest wine festival, there is a tradition to have some visiting country, that is visible both in the program and of course in wine tastings. This time it was Chile, one of our all time favorites. Chile is home to some excellent Carmeneres and Chardonneys for example, and is the 5th largest wine producer in the world.
One amazing idea in the festival was offering the so-called wine couples. This program introduces paired wines in selected stalls, the idea is to compare two wines that are similar, but still different. The wine couples can state out the differences coming from different wine regions, the length or type of aging or the method of fermentation for example. Also need to mention, that in wine couple tasting you get 2 for 1, so tasting the other half of the couple is for free.
As stated, on top of wine tasting, there is also a lot of other program in the festival. Food is in big role of course, and there is wide gastronomic selection and several food exhibitors present in the festival. Performing arts haven’t been forgotten either; there is the main festival stage and three other stages where different performances take place. The program is split to different days based on the style, Thursday when we visited, was focusing on pop music, Friday was dedicated to world music, on Saturday there was jazz, as there traditionally has been, and on Sunday it was time for folk music with a harvest parade and a folk dance gala.
Wine festivals can be of great education and fun, but are not the only way to get to know Hungarian wines. There are different wine tourism possibilities in several wine areas, from day visits to week-long tours. It is easily possible to plan your own route and book accommodation next to the wineyards.
We will give wine travelling a try in our next destination, Eger wine region. More about that will follow in later posts!