Drinking
Hungary's climate and diversity of soils are perfect for wine ( bor ), though cold winters mean that reds are usually on the light side. In the last few years the wine market has really begun to take off, and, though good vintages are still cheap by Western standards, prices are rising steadily. In bars and most restaurants you can either buy it by the bottle ( uveg ) or the glass ( pohar ). There are twenty wine-growing regions in the country, of which the best are Villany, Eger, Tokaj, Szekszard and the Balaton. They even manage to grow grapes on the sandy soils around Kecskemet, at the edge of the Great Plain, but the wines from there are pretty vile. Overall, though, standards are constantly rising as more vineyards try to win the right to label their bottles minosegi bor (quality wine), the equivalent of appellation controlee . In recent years, Hungary's wines have improved dramatically, as private vineyards have recovered their old skills in making and selling their own wine. Experts predict that demand for good wine will quite soon begin to outstrip supply. Wine bars ( borozo ) are ubiquitous and far less pretentious than in the West: the wine served is often pretty rough stuff, and there's usually a cluster of interesting characters round the bar. True devotees of the grape make pilgrimages to the extensive wine cellars ( borospince ) that honeycomb towns like Tokaj and Eger. By day, people often drink wine with water or soda water, specifying a froccs or a yet more diluted hosszu lepes (literally, a "long step"). Wine can be sweet ( edes ), dry ( szaraz ), semi-sweet ( feledes ) or semi-dry ( felszaraz ). Hungarians enjoy the ritual of toasting , so the first word to get your tongue around is egeszsegedre ("EGG-aish-shaig-edreh") - "cheers!" When toasting more than one other person, it's grammatically correct to change this to egeszsegunkre ("cheers to us!"). Hungarians only consider it appropriate to toast with wine or spirits. A simpler version that will get you by is szia (see-ya) for one person, and sziasztok (see-ya-stock) for more people.
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