Hungary

Tokaj was classified by royal decree in 1737, which makes it one of the first legally demarcated wine regions anywhere, ahead of every French appellation. The wine that decree protected, Tokaji Aszú, is made from grapes shrivelled by botrytis and picked berry by berry, then macerated in a base wine and fermented slowly. Its sweetness is measured in puttonyos, and it holds acidity high enough that a very sweet wine still finishes clean.

Furmint is the grape behind it, and the more recent story is that furmint also makes excellent dry white. Dry Tokaji has become the country's most exported serious wine style: it has volcanic soils behind it, high acidity, and it takes oak well. Hárslevelű, the second Tokaj grape, is more floral and more perfumed.

The rest of Hungary is largely a red and everyday white country. Villány in the south makes ripe cabernet franc, which has become its calling card. Eger is known for Egri Bikavér, a blend traditionally led by kékfrankos, the Hungarian name for blaufränkisch. Around Lake Balaton, Badacsony and Somló grow whites on basalt.

Forty years of state control after 1949 flattened the industry, and the recovery since 1990 has been uneven. That is why Hungarian wine can still be strikingly cheap relative to what is in the bottle, particularly the dry whites.