by Caroline Gilby MW

Hungary has is the latest wine exporting country to have a promotional body: Wines of Hungary. The organization has been some time coming – the government first announced in 2006 that the 8 Forints per litre excise on wine would be switched into a new fund to pay for wine marketing and quality control. Errors and delays in enacting legislation, and time taken to actually generate some money meant the office has only just started to function. 

“In terms of international promotion, our major strategic goal is to build up the Wines of Hungary brand,” says managing director. Richard Nemes. “We are in the initial phase, branding Wines of Hungary, creating the website and related publications.” Nemes added that Wines of Hungary has also held several promotional programmes in primary target countries, such as the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and Poland, among others, and has organised several wine trips. “Based on these initial activities, we see promising signs and interest in Hungarian wines on the professional level.”

Promotion of Hungarian wine has been haphazard at best in recent years; reactive rather than as part of any co-ordinated long-term strategy. Part of the problem was that wine was covered among other agricultural products by AMC (Agricultural Marketing Centrum). AMC did run events like annual generic tastings, but struggled to get budgets confirmed each year, limiting strategic planning.

In addition this week, Zoltan Heimann (Pannon Wine Guild) reports that “The major wine associations have decided that we have to create a unified 'Body' (Magyar Bor Testület), including all key players.” It aims to represent at least 60% of the industry (excluding hobby growers and the grey market) and will be able to lobby government and the EU on behalf of the industry.

Hungary has desperately needed to bring its often fiercely independent winemakers together to raise her profile as wine country – it has a great story to tell and now may be able to tell it with a united voice.