Post–transitional development in the Hungarian wine sector: the case of the Mátra wine region

ABSTRACT

The global wine industry has experienced profound changes over the past decades. But no matter how fundamental these changes have been, they have hardly affected the duality of global wine production. Competition between producers from the Old World and the New World has been the dominant notion not only in the international wine trade and consumption but in academic discourses too. This paper aims to contribute to the latter by presenting a wine region from the Central and Eastern European region. The Mátra wine region, located in Hungary, is a perfect example of the various difficulties that a post-transitional wine region has had to face under free market conditions. By applying case study research strategy, the paper examines the development of the Mátra wine region over the past twenty-five years, focusing on region-specific issues that have slowed down its adaptation to these new circumstances.

KEYWORDS:

• Local community
• old world
• new world
• Hungary
• adaptation

Acknowledgement

This research entitled Living from their land: agricultural actors, rural development trajectories and rural policies in Hungary [OTKA NK 100675] was supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund, and led by the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) in a consortium with the Institute for Sociology (Hungarian Academy of Sciences). I owe a great debt to Katalin Kovács for her guidance and her infinite patience in assisting me in this endeavour. I would like to thank my colleagues whose inspiring comments and advice contributed much to the completion of this paper. I would also like to thank the Council of National Wine Communities, the Hungarian Central Statistical Office and the Department of Geodesy Remote Sensing and Land Offices: GIS Register for Vineyards for providing reliable and detailed data and maps for this study. I also wish to acknowledge the support provided by the Budapest Corvinus University. Last, but not least, the two anonymous reviewers deserve my sincere gratitude for their critically reviews and their constructive suggestions on how to improve the early version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Gábor Király http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7728-6367

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Országos Tudományos Kutatási Alapprogramok [grant number OTKA NK 100675].