The photographs are published with the interviewee’s permission.
People might be forgiven for thinking that wine has always been at the centre of your life. Yet you actually came to it from an entirely different world.
Not at all. I started working in the early 1990s, when Hungary was opening up after the change of regime and everyone was trying to find their place in a new economic landscape. I joined a business that was, in effect, starting out at much the same time as I was. We sold boats, motorboats and other watersports equipment, and I did everything from sales to purchasing. Alongside that, I completed an advanced qualification in foreign trade because I felt it was knowledge that would prove useful in the long run. And it certainly did. (laughs) Even today, I find myself drawing on things I learnt during that period. Strategic thinking, understanding markets, respect for numbers, a commercial mindset – all of that took shape then.
‘Respect for numbers’ is an interesting phrase.
It matters to me, although I was never particularly fond of mathematics. But life taught me that numbers don't lie. You can like something or dislike it; you can have an opinion about it. In the end, though, numbers have a sobering honesty. Perhaps that's why I'm often rather more pragmatic than people initially expect.
Does that come more from your mother or your father?
Definitely my mother. Of the three siblings, I'm probably the one who inherited that side most strongly. My younger brother, for example, is much more artistic, which comes from my father's side. My father is a painter and graphic artist, and one of the pioneers of digital art in Hungary. My mother, by contrast, was immensely practical. She worked as a doctor throughout her life, brought order and structure to everyday things, and I think it was from her that I learnt that ideas alone aren't enough. You have to make them happen.
Where did you grow up?
In Újlipótváros (Budapest, 13th district - the editor), in what I would call – in the best sense of the term – a traditional bourgeois family. People tend to imagine that life in an artistic household must be romantic or bohemian, but it wasn't quite like that. My mother left early every morning for the hospital and came home in the evening, while my father worked at home and looked after us. Designs for exhibition panels, posters and paintings would be standing around our bedroom. Having a studio as part of the flat seemed perfectly normal to us. That was simply our everyday life, while at the same time we saw our mother going off to work at the hospital from morning until night.
Your father went on to become an internationally recognised artist. Were you conscious of that as a child?
Not really. When you're a child, your father is simply the man who's there at the drawing board in the morning. It was only later that I began to understand his professional significance. He first became known as an exhibition designer and graphic artist, before moving increasingly towards fine art, with digital art eventually becoming his principal field. He taught in the United States, Australia, Korea, China and numerous other countries, featured in international rankings of poster artists and exhibited all over the world. As a child, what I mostly noticed was that he travelled a great deal and that occasionally some rather unusual artists would appear at our home.
How much did growing up around art influence you?
Enormously, although not in the sense that I wanted to become an artist myself. What it taught me was openness. In an artistic family, creativity, curiosity and experimentation are simply part of everyday life. It was perfectly natural in our home to debate things, ask questions and think differently. I think I've carried that into my own work.
Where did you go to school?
Vörösmarty Secondary School. By then there was already some freedom to choose between schools, and I really liked its ethos. It managed to be both traditional and open-minded. My best friend went there too, which, when you're a teenager, is obviously a fairly compelling argument. I loved those years.
From our conversations, you seem to combine a very systematic way of thinking with an intense curiosity. Where does that come from?
Probably from precisely that duality within my family. On one side there was artistic freedom; on the other, discipline and a strong sense of duty. The combination shaped me. I think my career reflects that too. I work in education, which demands structured thinking, but also in wine, which has a powerful cultural and emotional dimension.
Many people know you as a restaurateur, restaurant owner and entrepreneur. Today, do you essentially make your living from wine alone?
Yes. In 2021, after 20 years, I left the hospitality business. There were several reasons. Covid, of course, turned the industry upside down, but circumstances within the business had also reached a point where we had to choose: either pour enormous amounts of energy into simply surviving, or let it go. I'd already lived through the economic crisis of 2008–2010, so I knew exactly what a situation like that demanded. I sat down, did the sums, thought everything through, weighed up the options and made a decision.
But something interesting happened during Covid. The restaurants were closed and the school – CEWI – couldn't operate in its usual form either, so for once I had the time to consider what I actually missed. I was teaching and holding online wine tastings, and suddenly I realised something: what I missed during lockdown wasn't hospitality. It was teaching. My wife, Judit, asked me a very simple question one day: ‘Why don't you let hospitality go?’ It turned out she was right.
It can't have been an easy decision.
It wasn't. I was one of those people in Budapest hospitality who genuinely made their living from the business. And we weren't talking about a single restaurant. It was an operation built on several pillars: the restaurant, events, hotel partnerships and various other services. We had spent years building it. At the same time, I felt the room for manoeuvre becoming increasingly restricted, and Covid merely amplified an uncertainty that had already been there. Eventually, I decided I wanted to test myself in a completely different situation. I wanted to know whether it was possible to make a living purely from wine education and my professional expertise.
And is it?
It is – but only if you work extremely hard and have several strings to your bow. Education alone isn't necessarily enough. For me, education is at the heart of everything, but consulting is every bit as important. There's Villány, for example, where I've been working for almost a decade on the wine region's strategy and marketing. Then there's the Three Rivers Valley project, which is about developing the identity and communications of an ethnic Hungarian wine region beyond Hungary's borders. These projects constantly challenge me intellectually. They don't allow me to settle into a routine.
After all these years, can teaching still offer you something new?
Absolutely. But I've also had to learn how to delegate. One of the most important lessons hospitality taught me was that no one person can do everything. I've brought that same philosophy into education. Today, I'm very precise about which courses I teach personally, at which levels and how much teaching I take on. There are subjects that some of my colleagues teach far better than I do. Why shouldn't they teach them? I concentrate on the areas where I can say with complete confidence that I'm up to date and can remain credible. I'm very happy to leave the rest to people who know more about it than I do.
That's a relatively rare attitude in the wine world.
Yet to me it seems perfectly natural. A Master of Wine who taught me in London once said that being a Master of Wine doesn't mean you can know everything. That was an important realisation. A lot of people like to give the impression that they know everything about everything. I'm not one of them. I think it's far more important to understand the limits of your own knowledge. When I know something, I take full responsibility for it. When I don't, I find someone who knows more than I do. I don't regard that as a weakness. I regard it as a strength.
Has wine education never become routine for you?
It can't. And if it does, you should stop. The wine world is constantly changing. New trends emerge, new technologies appear, market conditions shift. Students ask questions, and they are perfectly entitled to expect current, informed answers. If you relied solely on what you learnt on the WSET Diploma 20 years ago, you would very quickly lose credibility. That's why consulting and teaching complement one another so well. What I experience in one area feeds directly into the other. Perhaps that's why, even after 16 or 18 years, I still go into a course or a professional meeting with much the same curiosity I had at the beginning. The difference is that today I have a better sense of what is worth paying attention to.
You've mentioned your long involvement with Villány. What exactly is your role there?
My work in Villány essentially grew out of what I'd previously been doing at national level. As head of the National Wine Expert Committee, I spent many years involved in the communication, marketing and promotion of Hungarian wine. I enjoyed that work, but there was one serious problem: the structures, decision-makers and institutional framework were constantly changing. Just as we were beginning to build something, responsibility for the whole system would move to another organisation. There was no continuity.
Villány is completely different. We've been working with the same team towards the same goal for 10 years. That makes an enormous difference. Our role isn't simply to organise advertising campaigns. It's about maintaining a long-term strategy that evolves subtly from year to year while its foundations remain stable.
Photo: @VinCE
What does that involve in practice?
We constantly monitor markets, consumer behaviour and the economic environment, and adjust our communications accordingly. We decide which events are worth attending in a particular year, which international markets to focus on, what professional programmes to organise, and which communication channels to use both at home and abroad. Then we prepare the budgets and plans and present them to the wine region's professional bodies. We have a wine marketing workshop that meets every month. In January, for example, we present the concept for the whole year, discuss the opportunities and priorities, and then decide what can realistically be achieved with the resources available.
What's the most important thing you've learnt about wine marketing over the years?
That you can't invent a new identity every year. Building a wine region isn't a sprint; it's a marathon. I see the same mistake in so many places: a new slogan every year, a new logo, a new direction, a new message. All that does is confuse the consumer. Villány is fortunate because the region's character and style are clear. It has the grape varieties and the values on which to build – Cabernet Franc being the obvious example. Our job isn't to invent a new story every year. It's to find new ways of telling the same story and keeping it relevant.
You also work extensively in international markets. Is there really room for a Hungarian wine region on the global stage today?
Far more than many people in Hungary imagine – although not everywhere, and not in every category. One of my most interesting experiences over the past year was in Switzerland. We took Villány to a professional event in Basel, where we held a masterclass and tasting. The masterclass was full, but the success went well beyond that. The whole presentation was extremely well received. The feedback suggested that Swiss professionals and consumers genuinely appreciated the quality of Villány's wines. Several people told us that, in terms of value for money, it was very difficult to find anything comparable in either France or Italy.
That sounds encouraging. But isn't positioning Hungarian wine correctly in a market like Switzerland particularly difficult?
That's precisely the key issue. You mustn't sell it too cheaply. The worst thing you can do is leave consumers feeling that they're buying your wine simply because they can't afford Bordeaux or a Tuscan red. You don't want to be the cheap alternative. You want to represent value in your own right. That means getting the pricing right. We're not talking about €100 wines, but we're not talking about €15 either. You have to find the point at which the wine retains its prestige while remaining competitive. That takes serious analysis, expertise and constant monitoring.
Is that what a consultant is there to do?
Yes, but there's an important distinction. There are people who arrive and tell everyone what to do, and there are people who help others think. I want to be one of the latter. I don't believe in someone turning up and telling an entire wine region what it ought to do. The region knows itself. The people who live and work there understand their own circumstances. The consultant's job is to organise that experience, bring in international examples, outline the possibilities and help people make decisions. You don't make the decisions for them. You think alongside them.
Is that what keeps you so enthusiastic about working with wine regions?
Yes, because every wine region is different, every community is different and every situation is different. When you see a strategy beginning to work, when a wine region starts to find its own voice, when consumers begin to take notice – that's immensely inspiring. Perhaps that's why I couldn't imagine working exclusively in a classroom any more. I need to step back into the real world from time to time, encounter genuine problems and see how things actually work in the market. Because ultimately wine doesn't live in presentations or strategies. It lives in people's glasses.
More recently, alongside your work in Villány, you've become involved in developing the Three Rivers Valley wine region. Why take on that particular challenge?
For precisely the reason many people wouldn't: because it is a challenge. Villány today is a recognised, well-positioned wine region. Expectations are naturally very high because you're responsible for keeping a strong brand alive and continuing to develop it, but the foundations are already there. Three Rivers Valley is almost the opposite. We're talking about an area that isn't particularly well known as a wine region even within Slovakia, while in Hungary even fewer people are aware that it exists at all.
What did you find when you began working there?
The first thing I tried to do was obtain reliable data. That sounds straightforward, but it wasn't. I had to piece together information from three different sources simply to establish the size of the vineyard area, how many hectares we were dealing with, which varieties were planted and what the production structure looked like. Eventually, working with local stakeholders, we created a database that gave us something solid to work from.
The second step was getting to know the wines. And, to be frank, that was a very pleasant surprise. The wines are good. And I don't say that simply because I happen to be involved in the project. When we tasted them systematically with independent professionals, we all reached the same conclusion. And if the wines are good, the other problems can be solved.
What do you mean by ‘the other problems can be solved’?
A lack of recognition or small production volumes aren't necessarily disadvantages. In fact, they can be an advantage. If a wine region is small, it shouldn't be thinking about mass production or trying to compete at the cheapest end of the market. I don't think the future of Three Rivers Valley lies in competing on price with Europe's major wine regions. Its opportunity is to present itself as an exciting, distinctive wine region with a particular sense of origin – somewhere still waiting to be discovered. That requires a completely different communications approach and a completely different strategy.
Presumably, before you can do that, you first have to define what the wine region actually is.
Exactly. That was the first big question: which grape varieties should form the basis of its identity? A wine region can't communicate 20 different grape varieties simultaneously. Consumers remember simple messages. So we began by looking at the planting data and then organised a professional blind tasting. Merchants, sommeliers, wine writers and other professionals tasted around 40 wines. The result was fascinating. Among the whites, three varieties consistently stood out: Olaszrizling, Riesling and Grüner Veltliner. Among the reds, Kékfrankos was the clear standout. From that point onwards, we had a foundation on which to build.
Yet there seem to be considerable differences of opinion within the region about the direction it should take.
Of course there are, and that's entirely normal. There's a strong natural-wine movement, there are more traditionally minded wineries, and there are larger and smaller producers. The question isn't whether those differences exist. It's whether they divide the region or enrich it. I believe they can enrich it. I don't think a wine region should have to choose between natural and conventional approaches. There's room for both. I have only one condition: the wine has to be clean and enjoyable. If that's the case, then different styles don't weaken one another. They strengthen one another, and over time it's possible to find genuine synergies between them.
What kind of leadership philosophy do you bring to a project like this?
A very simple one: if we're going to do something, let's do it properly. If there's an opportunity, take it. If there's a goal, work towards it. I don't believe in endless meetings. Strategy matters. Data matters. Planning matters. But at some point you have to act. Wine regions don't develop because we talk about them. They develop because we work consistently for them and show consumers, both at home and internationally, what we stand for.
Central Europe has come up several times in our conversation as a wine region in its own right. How important is that idea to you?
Increasingly important. Over the past few years I've travelled extensively throughout the region, tasted a huge number of wines and met many winemakers. And the more I see, the more convinced I become that Central European wine remains undervalued despite its extraordinary diversity. Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova – each has its own story, yet we share cultural roots, historical experiences and many of the same challenges.
It could even become the basis of a dedicated programme at CEWI: a course that presents the wines of Central Europe not simply country by country, but as a region. For now it's only an idea. But it's a very exciting one.
How important has the idea of legacy become to you?
When I was younger, I was more interested in what I could build. Today I'm also interested in what will remain of what I've built. (laughs) That doesn't necessarily have to mean something monumental. It could be a school, a course, a professional community. It could be a wine region that you've helped find its own voice. Or it could simply be a few hundred or a few thousand people who see something differently in the world of wine because our paths crossed. To me, those are equally meaningful forms of legacy.
After all these years, what still motivates you?
The same thing that motivated me when I was young: curiosity. That's the one thing that hasn't changed. The wonderful thing about wine is that you can never reach the end of it. There's always another country, another wine region, another grape variety, another story. Fortunately, I've been like that since childhood. I've always wanted to know what's behind the next door…
Looking back over the past 30 years, what are you most proud of?
That, in the end, I've always been able to do what I love. I don't think that's something anyone should take for granted. Very few people can say that they make their living doing something they genuinely love, and I've been fortunate in that respect. Wine isn't simply work for me. It's a world through which I can meet people, discover stories, learn and teach. Perhaps that's the most important thing of all, because ultimately none of this is really about wine. It's about people and their stories. Wine is simply the language through which we begin talking to one another.
Are there still things you want to achieve?
Of course. There always are. I'd like the wine regions of Central Europe to receive more attention. I'd like to continue developing wine education, and I'd like the projects I'm working on today to continue functioning successfully in the long term. And eventually, I'd like to be able to hand over everything we've built knowing that it's in good hands.
Because perhaps that's one of the most important tasks once you reach a certain point in life. It's no longer about doing everything yourself. It's about making sure there's someone there to carry it forward. If I can achieve that, I think I'll be satisfied.
What does wine mean to you today?
Opportunity. A connection with nature and with people. Curiosity. A sense of calm. For me, wine is a way of life – a journey I began more than 20 years ago, and one that can still surprise me just as much as it did in the beginning. It's difficult to imagine a greater gift from a profession.
