Around 200,000 hectoliters of sparkling wine are produced in Hungary every year, making the country the 10th-11th largest producer of sparkling wine in the world, the Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture revealed in a statement on Tuesday.
According to the statement, 75-80 percent of the sparkling wine produced in Hungary is sold on the domestic market, while a quarter to a fifth of it is exported. Among the most important destinations for Hungarian exports this year are Romania, Canada, Estonia, Sweden, and Latvia.
It is also noted that the sparkling wine market is showing stable growth worldwide, both in terms of volume and value sold, and is the most dynamic category of wine products. Sparkling wine production has been growing almost continuously in Hungary since the early 2000s, only to stall during the economic crisis in 2008 and the coronavirus epidemic, but quickly recovered, the Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture added.
The success of Hungarian sparkling wine production is also demonstrated by the increasing number of award-winning Hungarian sparkling wines.
This year, for example, Hungarian products excelled at the Decanter World Wine Awards, the world’s most prestigious wine and champagne competition, with four platinum and nine gold medals. Some 18,000 entries from 54 countries entered the competition this year.
The first Kreinbacher sparkling wines made their debut at the Decanter World Wine Awards in 2014 and have received huge accolades every year since.
The Hungarian Kreinbacher Birtok’s Prestige Brut and Brut Classic sparkling wines each won a gold medal in the prestigious competition. This is the eighth consecutive year that Kreinbacher Birtok has been on the medal list with its sparkling wines at the Decanter World Wine Awards. Founder József Kreinbacher bought his first vineyards on the Somló hill near Lake Balaton in 2002, and established the estate, which has now grown to 60 hectares.
Kreinbacher’s wines and sparkling wines are unique in that they are based on local varieties and the millions of years of volcanic heritage of the terroir.
In addition to Kreinbacher sparkling wines, Sauska’s products are also outstanding, award-winning, and internationally renowned. In this year’s Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Championships, where only sparkling wines are judged, Sauska sparkling wines from Hungary won two gold and one silver medal. Almost a thousand sparkling wines from twenty-one countries competed in the prestigious international competition, which ultimately awarded 147 gold and 249 silver medals. Sauska Brut and Sauska Brut Magnum both won gold medals, while Sausa Rosé Brut was awarded a silver medal.
Sauska Brut received awards in recent years in various prestigious competitions.
The Sauska winery is located in Villány, one of Hungary’s premier wine regions in the south of the country. The estate was founded in 2007 by the Sauska family with the aim of creating an optimal processing capacity for the size of the estate, so as not to compromise on the choice of harvest date or storage, i.e. quality.
Over the past 20 years, world sparkling wine production has increased by 70 percent and now accounts for eight percent of wine production.
Europe accounts for 80 percent of sparkling wine production, with a volume of around 16 million hectoliters. Champagne is consumed all over the world for holidays, birthdays, weddings, family events, but also as an aperitif or as part of cocktails, so demand for the product is now stable all year round. However, it is mainly at the end of the year, in the last four weeks of the year, that sales spike, according to the statement from the Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture.
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