Taste Hungary Wins Drinks Business Wine Tourism Award!

Taste Hungary—a multi-tiered Hungarian wine and tourism company—was awarded the Drinks Business Award for Best Contribution to Wine and Spirits Tourism. “This year’s award goes to an organization that was praised for harnessing the power of social media to build a loyal community at a time when travel is tricky,” said Patrick Schmitt MW, Drinks Business editor-in-chief. Drinks Business magazine has been recognizing achievements by the world’s top drinks companies for 18 years. Typically unveiled at the London Wine Fair, this year’s award ceremony was streamed online.

Pivoting a tour company when travel is impossible

Through its various activities, Taste Hungary focuses on building an international audience for fine Hungarian wine. In a typical year, it hosts 10,000+ guests on food and wine tours, and sommeliers at The Tasting Table (their wine tasting venue) lead educational wine tastings twice daily. Taste Hungary also has a wine import and retail business in the US, which imported and sold more than 10,000 bottles of Hungarian wine in its first year. When it became clear in March that international travel would suddenly halt, Taste Hungary’s forrays in different branches of the wine business helped it quickly shift focus to a new goal: bring the Hungarian wine into people’s homes (rather than bringing guests to the wine).

Its audience was eager for home deliveries and unique at-home experiences, and Taste Hungary provided this in the US and EU.

“This is the year that rather than hosting guests for in-person experiences, we brought Hungarian wine tourism into the living rooms of our guests,” said Taste Hungary co-owner Carolyn Bánfalvi. “From accepting the unimaginable fact that our business would be forced to shut down for so many months (and still going), to coming up with a plan B, it has been a crazy year. Our sommeliers turned into delivery guys, salesmen, and facebook live personalities. We all really had to step out of our wine tourism comfort zone and focus on live social media events, email marketing, and wine retailing.”