HUNGARY: Hungarian vineyard begins Europe's earliest harvest, as heatwave sees grapes ready in record time

Workers at a Hungarian vineyard have started their harvest weeks ahead of schedule following an unusually hot summer. Harvest has never started as early as this season on the slopes above Lake Balaton in Hungary, as the first grapes were picked on Tuesday (July 31). The Hungarian grape called Csabagyongye, meaning the pearl of Csaba, is a particularly early ripening grape, but even so, its harvest at the end of July surprised harvesters and winemakers. The mild spring and unusually hot summer produced the earliest ripening time ever seen here, and the vineyard says its grapes are the first to be picked in Europe this season. "There has been a lot of sunshine, already in April there were hot periods of 30 degrees Celsius," a woman harvesting the grapes said on Tuesday. "I've been working outside for 16 years, but we have never seen anything like this. Among these vines the heat was 50 degrees Celsius when we worked. Simply both us and the plant got sun stroke," Gyorgy Orsos, head of the harvesting team at Balaton Co-operative said. "Unfortunately this is how it is, but at least we have never had a harvest as early as this, ever," Orsos added. The harvest at the Balaton co-operative is designated for the Varga Winery, Hungary's largest winery. Varga is a family owned business that started in 1993 with 400,000 bottles, and has now grown to 11 million bottles of wine per year. Their popular first wine of the year always comes from the Muscat-style Hungarian breed of Csabagyongye and this year the first bottles will on the shelves by mid-August. "We are a lot more than one week ahead of the usual start of harvesting time. The grape, Csabagyongye is the earliest ripening grape of the northern hemisphere, and as far as we know it has the shortest ripening time in the world. Normally we would begin the harvest around August 6-10, but this year the start of harvest was brought forward to the end of July," Balint Varga, wine producer of Varga Winery said. Their other grape varieties are also ahead of their usual ripening time and if no change comes in the unusually hot weather more early harvests can be expected this year.

ITN Source | July 31, 2007

Tags:. .begins. .seen. .per. .summer. .ready