Under The Radar

Discovering lesser-known fine Hungarian reds that are versatile and approachable.

- ARISTA KWEK

In 2004, James Suckling was invited to a blind tasting wine dinner with 10 bottles to sample. The evening turned out to contain many surprises — one of which was how a 1989 Pétrus, a 100-point wine, appeared to be the unanimously voted worst wine.

The other? A 2000 Gere Attila Kopar Cuvée, a Bordeaux blend from Hungary, emerged as a crowd favourite. “Balanced, silky, and fruity… but I had never heard of it, much less tasted it,” Suckling described. As the American wine critic’s famous line goes: “When a Hungarian red beats Pétrus in a blind tasting, you know the world of wine is a gunslinger’s paradise.”

A storied history

Despite being an Old World wine region with a heritage dating back to Roman times, Hungarian wines haven’t quite had their moment the way French or Italian wines have.

There are good reasons for that. For one, the country has had a turbulent history: The Ottoman-Hungarian wars, a massive bout of phylloxera in the 19th century, and the economic instability of World War I contributed to a declining wine industry. And when Hungary fell into the communist regime in 1945, quality was abandoned for quantity for all production matters, even its wines.