With two competing wine festivals running in Budapest this weekend, wine lovers face a difficult choice. Thanks to the fairly useless, no doubt government-funded website (although at least it is in English) and the even less helpful member of staff at event organizers Haris Kft (she told us to piss off and read the website), we are tempted to advise everyone to pass up the Budai Gourmet festival and heartily recommend the Badacsony Wine Festival (nice website, not in English) to be held in Városháza Park. But although the white wines of the Badacsony region are pretty darn good – look out for the signature kéknyelű – that would be a mistake, because Budai Gourmet, which started life as a standard wine and cheese festival, now features some of Budapest’s finest restaurants, including such Top 33 luminaries as Segal, Csalogány 26 and Maligán. And hey, who ever said one weekend wasn’t big enough for two wine festivals.
Absolutely… except my opinion on the websites is a little different:
I found the Budai gourmet site to be more than comprehensive for
the event, while the monolingual site for the Badacsony Wine
Festival revealed the same info (address etc) no matter what
heading was clicked: except for a nice photograph that website
was seriously lacking info… such as the wine producers/exhibitors
perhaps? UPDATE: just rechecked and it is a browser caching
problem, faulty website…
Only problem with the BG Fest was Csalogány 26 and Gundel
seemed to have jumped ship at some point, so were not present on
Sunday when I went… Also thought the festival could have
featured a few more restaurants, however those which were there
were excellent! Wine was over-represented (but by no means
*representative*) considering the goal of the festival.
Went over the weekend to the Budai Gourmet festival and it got two thumbs up from both the missus and i. The wine selection was excellent, with all of our favorites represented and a few new favorites found. The producers were incredibly friendly, more than willing to talk about the backstory on each glass, and happy to be in each other’s company. The food tent was fun but suprisingly limited, with short tasting menus from a handful of restaurants (saw Csalogany 26, didn’t see Segal), but by far the star of the show was the cheese/cured meats purveyor closest to the entrance. The cheese plate was hands down spectacular, best I’ve had in Budapest. Well-rounded variety of soft and hard, salty and sweet, with excellent olives, a simple mesculun salad and a sardine to boot. For 1300 forints it was exceptional quality at a great price. The cheesemonger was French…I suppose that was the force at work. With a glass of Gal Tibor chardonnay to wash it down, it was one of the better lunches we’ve had in a while. Wish I brought my camera!