 Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horkey. Today, we're gonna talk about how to read Hungarian wine labels. Something that's actually very difficult and confusing. Before we get started, I'm gonna tell you to check out the link below and sign up for our newsletter because we're gonna be launching a Kickstarter for our fourth wine book, Discover Hungarian Wine, a visitor-friendly guided march. And you'll get the opportunity to sign up to find out when the Kickstarter's released, how you can get a special edition sign copy with a discount and have your name printed in the acknowledgments and all that good stuff. So now let's start talking about Hungarian wine labels. You know, it's funny. We've been going to Hungary visiting regions producers for the last couple of years. And when we write our articles, a lot of people will email us, sometimes even some other wine writers, and they told us, I like the Hungarian wines, but when I went to Hungary and I looked at the restaurant list or I just looked at the bottles, I kind of felt stupid. I had no idea what I was looking for. So this is what we're gonna do. I'm gonna help demystify or help you decipher some of the basic terms you'll see in a Hungarian wine label. Beginning of video, we'll start out small and basic and then we'll kind of go to more advanced stuff. So the first thing that you should know is Hungarian is only one of three European languages to not have a Latin derivative for wine. And in Italy, you see Vino and Frans Vien. In Hungary, the word for wine is bor, B-O-R. The name for red is boros, and the name for white is fehér. So sometimes you'll see those terms put together like fehér bor or boros bor, obviously means white wine. Or red wine. Two other very important terms are dry wines, sadas, and then you'll have sweet wines like the great sweet wines of Tokai, eddish. Those will also be on the label. One thing that you gotta know in Hungary is most locals, most people buy wines by producer. That's why you're gonna see the producer's name on top. And then secondly, they buy by variety. Hungarian wines are generally labeled by variety except for several different cuvées, different blends that we'll talk about later. And then by vintage, by year. Some of the simple labels, you'll just see the winery name, the variety, and then the vintage. Now while the French have their chateaus, the Italians, you'll see a lot of teneutas. And in Spain, you'll see bodegas. Hungary has a bunch of different terms for that. So sometimes you'll see the producer, you'll see terms like pince or pince set, that basically means cellar or winery. You'll also see kuria, which is also like a farmhouse type of a bodega. And you'll also see beer talk, which means estate. So if you have somebody like this guy right here, this is labeled as the stump pince set. That just means stump wine, like stump is the family name. And then that is the winery. Now, Hungarian wines are mostly labeled by great variety. However, you will see some special blends, some special terms that you might see on Hungarian labels, things like this one, like a agri-bikiver, that's a red blend. Or you might see agri-chillag, the star of agri, that's a white blend. Saxaardy-bikiver, that's also a red blend. Down south, you'll see Villeney-Franc, was a very premium level of Cabernet-Franc. And now it comes to Tokai. Tokai has a bunch of different terms that are on top of all the things that you need to know about Hungarian wines. But luckily I made a video about Tokai terminology and I'll put the link in the description box and I'll put a card up there so you can check that out if you want to. Those basics should be able to get you started. Now, if you wanna go above and beyond, some people want to know more about the region, the place where the grapes are grown, where the wine is produced. And Hungary does have a PDO-PGI system. They are in the EU, so they have to make rules that comply. And I'm gonna compare Hungary's Appalachian system kind of like Italy's to make things easier. You know, Italy you have IGT, DOC, and then DOCG. Hungary is the same. And that base level, if you think about Italian IGTs in Hungary, those are OFJs. And you'll see them sometimes on the back. In the middle, the DOC's, the Hungarian equivalent is OEM and at the very top, you'll see the DOCG equivalent in Hungary is called VA or DHC. One problem I have with the Hungarian Appalachian systems is you'll often see them on the back labels. And like this one, this is the stomp, this is the stomp, now you get Egri Bikiver. It's a VA, it's a VE. That's what we would say in English. But it doesn't tell you where it's actually from. It's just telling you that basically this is quote, DOCG quality level wine. Hungary, like the rest of the world, is getting crazy about site-specific or terroir-driven wines. So on Hungarian wine labels sometimes, you will see not only the variety, but you will also see the crew that it comes from. Like this one I'll put on the screen. And the name for crew, or vineyard crew, in Hungarian is Dülül. So if you see this one from Erzsibit, that is the Erzsibit Pince, Erzsibit winery. And this is the crew where the wine is actually from in Tokai. Let's put everything together and decipher this Hungarian wine label. The producer is Homono. The varieties are Thurman and Harszlevelu. It's a blend, Vintage is 2017. Serra's Feher means dry wine. And Otolum ala alu eredet mezhele le shubur, means it's an OEM wine. If we use our Italian example, it's a DOC level wine. There's a lot more when it comes to Hungarian wine labels because the Hungarian language is so difficult. And that's why we're writing the book. There'll be a big section in Discover Hungarian Wine about deciphering labels under and standing some more of the terminology, some of the nomenclature that goes on the label. So make sure you sign up for that newsletter. Our Kickstarter will be out soon. And let me know. Do you guys like Hungarian wines? If you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel, and I will see you at the next episode.