Description

Bikavér is one of Hungary’s most famous (or infamous?) red wines, and there are several legends explaining the origin of the name. The most commonly told story is that when the Ottomans invaded Eger’s castle in 1552, the general in charge of protecting it had the bright idea to give red wine to the soldiers to make them braver and stronger. And it worked! The Hungarians became fearless defenders of their castle. The Ottoman soldiers saw red all over the Hungarian mustaches and clothes. Since they didn’t drink alcohol, they didn’t associate this with with wine, and they thought the Hungarians had been drinking blood from bulls. Nobody knows if this legend is true or not, and most likely it isn’t.   During the Communist era, winemaking in Hungary’s state-owned wine companies was characterized by mass production. During the 1970s and 1980s (and even still today), very low quality Bikavér wines were exported. Those bottom-shelf-wines were diluted, oxidized, and just plain bad examples of Hungarian wine. They harmed the reputation of the Bikavér style both abroad, and also within Hungary. Today wineries in Eger and Szekszárd are still trying to recover from the mass-production mess and rebuild their images.   Many of high-quality producers are still hesitant to advertise their blends as Bikavér, so you’ll often find the word “Bikavér” added in small print on the back label. But today’s Bikavérs can be high quality wines which are elegant, complex, and quite easy drinking … definitely worthy of being (re)discovered and given a second chance. One piece of advice: stay away from those Bull’s Bloods with big bull images on the labels (and which are still frequently found in the US). Those are the tourist traps, and embody the image that quality winemakers today are trying so hard to reverse.