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What to drink

Hungary, Croatia, Serbia and Romania are all both beer and wine drinking countries. Beer is mostly lager style, and although apparently produced by a number of national breweries, large multinational brewers own most producers. Draught beer (Hungarian csapolt sör, Croatian točeno pivo, Romanian bere la halba) is widely available. In all four countries wine (Hungarian bor, Croatian vino, Romanian vin) quality suffered from a pursuit of quantity during the communist era, but has been steadily recovering since.

In Hungary vineyards spread throughout the country produce large quantities of table wine mostly from Kadarka red grapes or Olasz white grapes (a variety of Riesling). More well-known are full bodied golden white wines, slightly sweet but fiery and peppery and an ideal accompaniment to spicy Hungarian food, and Bull’s Blood, a full-bodied red made from Bikavér grapes. Most famous of all is Tokay, a dessert wine from northeast Hungary made by a unique process where the sweet pulp of over-ripe rotted Furmint grapes (known as aszú) is added to barrels of one-year-old wine and left to mature for at least three more years.