travel.spectator.sk
Slovakia produces some very good wine (see
"Low Mountains, Small Batches, Big Flavours"). But it's not the
wine-lover's paradise it could be.
Wine has been made on
Slovak territory since as far back as the 7th century B.C. Its
viticultural history overlaps with that of Austria, one of the world's
greatest wine-producing nations; and of Hungary, a stalwart producer of
inexpensive quality wines, along with some high-end boutique ones. And
for good measure, Slovakia's southern wine regions lie on the same
latitude as Burgundy and Alsace in France.
Slovakia's
potential is endorsed by the prestigious Oxford Companion to Wine. In
its 1994 edition, the companion states that Slovakia's "wines show very
good fruit character...Identification of the best individual sites and
mesoclimates is so far in its infancy, but injection of technical
knowledge and capital investment are expected to help ... Slovakia
produce some wines of distinctly fine quality."
Yet
pluck a Sk120 (€3.50) bottle of white from a supermarket shelf, and
you're as likely to be confronted with something sour and rough-edged,
as you are with something delicate and drinkable. Wine very much
cheaper is almost sure to be terrible; doubling that price improves
your chances, but doesn't ensure a good bottle. And finding a good red
wine is even more difficult. What's going one here?
Forty
years of Soviet-style Communism - with its fever for rationalisation,
for quantity over quality - essentially severed Slovakia's ties with
the old Austro-Hungarian winemaking traditions. In rural areas under
Communism, each adult was allowed a maximum of 10 acres of land on
which to grow whatever they wanted. The rest was collectivised. Thus
the great bulk of wine-growing land was bundled into huge lots, and
cared for by state employees whose main incentive was to increase yield.
The
government's crude grading system awarded top prices to a few fancy
varietals, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and Rhine Riesling
(Rizling Rýnsky in Slovak). But these grape types never gained much of
a foothold, because their yields were too low to make them worth
planting. Less distinguished - and more prodigious - varietals such as
Müller-Thurgau and Welschriesling (Rizling Vlašský in Slovak) ruled the
day.
Meanwhile, vast, centralised production
facilities sprang up. Wine grapes became a commodity, to be sold to the
state-owned wineries at set, subsidised prices. "In the process, the
relationship between grape grower and wine maker gradually
disappeared," says Fedor Malík, a Slovak wine authority. Under
Communism, state-owned factories produced more than 80 percent of the
Slovak territory's wine. Smallholders produced the rest, for private
consumption or for barter.
Wine became just another
industrial product, like auto parts or machine tools. Quantity soared -
according to Igor Šarmír, secretary of the Slovak Grape and Wine
Producers Union , the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia was, by 1989,
producing a third more wine than it consumed, with the surplus being
sent to the Soviet Union or northwest to the Czech Lands.
Quality, meanwhile, plunged.
When
Communism crumbled in 1989, the winemaking system crumbled with it.
What's been left in its wake remains a work in progress. The problems
started with land restitution. According to Šarmír, the government
tried, not always successfully, to return collectivised land to its
former owners. "Many of the original deed holders had died, so the
government split up their land in small parcels and offered it to their
heirs," he says. But often the heirs had moved away from the country,
or there were so many of them that the parcels were too small to make
much of.
"There's a lot of vineyard land out there
just lying fallow," Šarmír says. "Either no one's really sure who it
belongs to, or the people that have inherited it just haven't done
anything with it."
As a result, Šarmír says, the
total amount of land planted with wine grapes has fallen by half, from
30,000 hectares in 1990 to 15,000 in 2002. Sadly, Slovakia will likely
never regain anything close to its old capacity. The European Union,
which zealously regulates how much land its member states can use for
commercial wine making, has allotted Slovakia 20,000 hectares of
wine-producing land upon entry in 2004. But each plot must be
"registered" with the EC - and land not registered in time for
accession in 2004 will likely forever be banned from producing wine.
"The
EC has allotted Slovakia 20,000 hectares, but if the number of
registered hectares stands below 20,000 at accession, the Commission
will be happy to lower its limit to whatever Slovakia has managed to
register," says Daniel Ács of the European Commision's delegation to
Slovakia. He adds that the industry is finding it difficult to add to
its 15,000 registered hectares, for the reasons cited above.
And
whereas under Communism the area produced a third more wine than it
consumed, it now consumes a third more than it produces. The shortfall
is mostly made up for by the Czech Republic's Moravia region, which is
very close to Slovakia's important Small Carpathians wine-producing
area. Some lower-priced Hungarian imports are available here, as are
wines - typically either very expensive or very cheap - from France and
Spain.
The situation actually benefited the wineries
that emerged after Communism, because they can sell everything they
produce at home. What's more, in 1993 the government imposed stiff
tariffs on imported wine, important protection in a country where the
population was suddenly able to travel to places like Spain and Italy,
where you can easily find a drinkable bottle for just a few euros.
Thus
if post-Communist events assured that the wine industry would survive,
they haven't done much to improve overall quality very rapidly.
Angela
Muir, a London-based wine expert who wrote the Czech and Slovak
Republics entry for the Oxford Companion to Wine, argues that the
progress toward high-quality wine in Slovakia has been slow and
sporadic since the fall of Communism. The demand surplus, along with
protective tariffs on imports, has "effectively made it unattractive
for Slovak producers to try and compete ... on the world market," she
says. Why should they, she asks, when "they can sell all they produce
and more to the home market?"
Nor are foreign wine
importers, beyond those in the Czech Republic, particularly interested
in buying Slovak wine. Producers here "had a very false idea about how
their wines stacked up against the competition. There is therefore a
huge price gap between what the local market will pay and what anyone
else - particularly a British supermarket - will pay," Muir says.
The
situation has essentially buffered Slovakia from a brutally competitive
international wine market. Unlike in Slovakia, international supply
exceeds demand, putting downward pressure on global wine prices. With
the opposite situation prevailing in Slovakia, its producers can charge
higher prices than producers in areas like southern Italy, some parts
of Spain, Chile, and Australia - without having to match up in quality.
But
things could change fast. Slovakia is scheduled to gain membership to
the European Union in 2004. With entry to the EU, wine tariffs will
have to tumble, meaning consumers will have access to international
wines at competitive prices. That could force more vintners to join the
effort - described in the profiles on Small Carpathian and Tokay
producers - to create concentrated, distinctive wines.
travel.spectator.sk |