Croatia guest of honor at 21st Buda Castle Wine festival

Croatia is the guest of honor this year of the wine festival which opened for the 21st time at the Buda Castle on Wednesday. The five-day festival offers wines from nearly 200 cellars throughout the country. Croatia will showcase as many as 120 wines at the festival, the most ever featured by any guest country.

Silvia Malnar, a senior diplomat at the Croatian embassy, said it was a great challenge to follow last year’s France as guest of honor at the festival. She said Croatian wine-makers grow 31 different types of grape on a relatively small area. As these wines are not too well known in Hungary, the festival will offer a good opportunity to present them to the public, she said.

Zoltan Zilai, the head of a wine-makers’ non-profit organisation, said Hungarian wines had been successful at international competitions, but the real battle is to attract consumers on the Hungarian market. The festival gives a good selection of the best Hungarian wines on the market, he said.

The festival will feature the best wines of the Carpathian basin along with the products of 28 young wine-makers from ten wine regions in Hungary. Opening the festival, Sandor Fazekas, the minister of agriculture, said Hungary’s wine sector is helped by recently-passed laws to further cut red tape for wine-growers.

The festival, as in previous years, will be accompanied by folk music, such as concerts by the Csik band, Gyorgy Ferenczi and Rackajam, Besh O drom and Ghymes. Saturday will be dedicated to the harvest and folk music with a presentation of music and traditions of the various wine regions. A detailed program can be found at www.aborfesztival.hu.