HUNGARIAN WINES Come to the Lowcountry Is Villány the New Bordeaux? BY RISA WILLIAMS MCMILLAN
Listen up you wine connoisseurs out there. There is more to know and love about wines from Hungary than just the sweet dessert grapes from the Tokaji vines. Remember when nobody had heard of Chilean wines or the grapes of New Zealand? Now those grapes are popular throughout the United States. Could Villány in Hungary be the new Bordeaux? Keep your wine imagination open as Hungarian wines are being poured in the Lowcountry and they are worth your while to whet your whistle. ‘Hungary comes to the Lowcountry’ is compliments of native Hungarian and Hilton Head resident Ferenc Vura (pronounced Frank) who moved from Hungary to Hilton Head 19 years ago. Ferenc came to the US to work in the hospitality industry and after working at various restaurants, he found his niche at the Old Oyster Factory, where has been on deck for 14 years. Under the auspices of a previous owner, Ferenc started becoming educated about wines during their weekly tastings. “The owner 44
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and manager wanted to make sure that if we served something, we knew what it was. The original owner went to school in France, so our wine list had a lot of French wines and he made us pronounce them out loud,” said Ferenc. “We had to know everything.” With all of his education about wine over the years, Ferenc admittedly knew nothing about Hungarian wines. This was not Ferenc’s fault – they simply were not imported into South Carolina. His fate with Hungarian wines was to change one day when his friend Cooper Cram, one of the owners of Bear Island Distributors, struck up a conversation with him after a tennis match. “He told me about how their license to sell beer included a wine license and he said someone had recommended that they distribute wine as well as craft beer because the beer market was seasonal,” said Ferenc. The wine wheels in Ferenc’s brain started spinning and an idea took shape.