Index – Abroad – Hungary is the world champion of wine recognition
The Hungarian team has now won the World Wine Recognition Championships in Avignon, southern France, ahead of Belgium and Spain, the organizers said.
The monthly Revue des vins de France, one of France’s most important trade journals, is now meeting its competition for the ninth time, with teams from 27 countries taking part.
To his great surprise, the Hungarian team, ie Attila Aranyos, Levente Molnár, Laura Rabcsánszki and Didier Sánchez, and the consultant Krisztina Palágyi won, instructing the tasters of the largest wine nations.
The Hungarian team won for the first time in the history of the Championnat du monde de dégustation, which was mentioned as the World Championship for wine recognition.
Speaking to the French magazine, Attila Aranyos said that he himself was surprised by the success:
I knew we would be in the top five, but to win the race, I was most surprised.
Each team participating in the World Championship consisted of four competitors and one advisor. In the first round, they had to blindly identify six wines, giving the grape variety, country, vintage, and producer. Teams advancing from the qualifiers had to continue the competition with six more wines. Of the twelve wines, six were red and six were white.
Competitors can taste completely blindly, they can’t see a bottle of wine, they can’t ask for outside help, they can just talk to each other and decide together. The wines come from all regions of the world and every vintage and are made from all grapes.
France’s first-place finisher in the first two years was pushed into this sixth place.