Vitis vinifera, also known as the common grapevine, has grown in Europe for thousands of years. Refreshingly, even after all that time, it still has surprises for your ordinary consumer. Even in the so-called ‘Old World’ there are regions only just beginning to emerge on the international scene.
Any intrepid oenophile would do well to look at Central Europe. While Germany has an undisputed position as a prominent winemaking nation, others fly under the radar. Austria has only relatively recently commanded attention for its wines, while Hungary and Croatia are on the up as trendy sources of great value wine.
With such countries rooted in boutique winemaking rather than large-scale production, bringing them to the international stage is often a passion project. That has certainly been the case at The Naughty Grape, a London-based importer, distributor and retailer founded last year. It has championed an even more obscure source of wine to the UK market: Slovakia.
Love at first sip
Arguably the most famous wine region in Central Europe – especially when one excludes Germany – is Tokaj. The luscious sweet wines and, increasingly, fresh whites have a global reach, and have put Hungary’s wine scene on the map.
The region served as the genesis for The Naughty Grape. However, co-founders Darren Kirkham and Lucia Dovalova were not in Hungary at the time. They were a few miles northeast, over the border in Slovakia, enjoying a glass of sparkling wine at an iconic producer.
“Our very first Slovak wine was in the Slovak part of Tokaj (at Château GRAND BARI),” explains Lucia. “The scenery was stunning and, with a glass of their fizz, we were instantly captivated. It was genuinely emotional.”
In Slovakia – indeed, in Hungary too – the Tokaj region serves as a gateway for an entire nation. It is far from Slovakia’s only production area, however. The nation has six winegrowing regions.
Three of those regions – Little Carpathians, Southern Slovakia and Nitra – sit in Slovakia’s southwest, towards the capital Bratislava. This is the site of the majority of production, thanks to the flatter sites of the Danubian lowland.
Moving east, the Central Slovakia region sits to the south of the Carpathian mountains, hugging the border with Hungary. Further east still, extending as far as the border with Ukraine, is the Eastern Slovakia region, with the small extent of Slovakian Tokaj in the middle of it.
For Darren and Lucia, then, the challenge was not only to introduce the UK to Slovakian wine, but also to champion the breadth of production on offer. With varied terroirs and more than 800 wineries, you cannot simply rely on one or two big producers.
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