Hungarian wine Challenge September 2024
Who doesn’t love a challenge? Especially one which involves wine? Well if you are like me, I imagine the idea of a wine challenge fills you with excitement and anticipation. And doing it in a beautiful part of Eastern Europe makes it all the more exciting. So in a nutshell: In September 2024, the challenge I set myself was to discover at least 100 Hungarian wines – drink them, review them and to do all of this in just 27 days.
There are those who probably think Hungary is not the first place you would want to visit for a challenge like this after all, hardly anyone knows about Hungarian wine. So I set out not entirely sure I could find 100 wines to try. Or that I could find 100 decent ones. I travelled North, South, East and West in Hungary, visiting wine regions, touring vineyards, going to wine festivals, attending wine tastings, and seeking our the best of what Hungary has to offer.
I’ve been travelling to Hungary off and on for well over 13 years, and during my visits have discovered a good number of fine Hungarian wines. Amazingly, between jobs I found myself in September 2024 with a month free, and saw that as a chance to spend an extended period of time in Hungary, travelling doing what this site is all about – Exploring the beautiful planet we live on, one glass at a time!
The rules:
Ok so the rules were fairly basic:
- The wines had to be Hungarian
- I had to drink them in Hungary
- I couldn’t have the same wine twice, but I could have a different vintage of the same wine.
- I had to drink them on location (i.e. I couldn’t buy bottles from the supermarket and drink them in the apartment.) This was so I was supporting the local wine economy when I bought the wines. Tastings, wine bars, etc… all ok, just no wine stores / supermarkets, etc…
- I had to do a short review / rating of each wine.
When:
The challenge started officially at 5pm on Sunday 1st September and ended at midnight on Friday 27 September.
Lots of people supported me during the challenge and I met a number of friends during my visit.
Thank you
As always, thank you for your interest in this challenge, this website and wine in general. If you do stop by and read the rest of the posts it really would mean the world to me. Otherwise – keep exploring this beautiful planet we live on, one glass at a time!