New Year’s
Eve is almost unimaginable without it. The legend goes that when the
Benedictine monk Dom Perignon first tried the sparkling wine he had invented
around the turn of the 18th century he exclaimed: “Come quickly, I am drinking
the stars!”
In reality,
however, the development of champagne cannot be linked to any one date: it is
instead the product of a long period of experimentation in wine making in which
chance also played an important
role.
Due to the
cost and complications of producing it, drinking champagne was initially only a
luxury for the European aristocracy and sophisticated society in
rulers, including Tsar Alexander I, Friedrich II of
and Britain’s King Edward VII.
Hungary’s champagne
Hungarian
champagne production got underway in
(then known by its Hungarian name of Pozsony) and then the seat of the
Hungarian national assembly, making
the second country in Europe after
to begin making champagne on a large scale – today’s champagne great powers
like
and
only followed suit later. Between 1880 and 1914 no fewer than 21 champagne
factories were established in
of which only five managed to survive in the long run.
One of the
best examples of Hungarian champagne production is without doubt the champagne
factory of József Törley, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year.
Törley acquired the rudiments of champagne production in the champagne capital
later Delbeck et Cié.
By 1880, he
already had his own factory in the Champagne wine region, using it as a base to
export wine to his native country
time he went to Budafok, and immediately recognised the enormous potential for
champagne production. There he found both a high-quality base wine for
champagne and a labyrinthine cellar for storage. In addition, Budafok was
situated at the gates of the Hungarian capital
Brought expertise home
In 1882,
József Törley returned to
and together with a young French wine expert, Louis Francois, successfully
established a champagne factory, although the two went their separate ways in
1886 following a difference of opinion. József Törley was lucky when it came to
his choice of wife. He married Irén Sacellary, the daughter of an immensely
wealthy Greek trading family. Sacellary brought a vast sum of money to the
marriage, enabling Törley to build an enormous complex in Budafok, consisting
of a factory, wine cellar, a mansion and a mausoleum. The Törley champagne
factory did a flourishing trade, reaching an annual output of one million
bottles of champagne by 1905, and two million shortly before the First World
War.
József
Törley died unexpectedly of appendicitis in 1907 at the age of just 50. At the
time he was at the peak of his business success. Following his death, the
business was continued successfully by his nephews. The First World War,
however, put an abrupt stop to the upturn in champagne production. Both
champagne production and sparkling wine consumption plummeted after the World
War. By 1929, the year of Wall Street crash, the factory was producing just
200,000 bottles. And then when by the beginning of the Second World War output
had climbed back to a million bottles a year, the Törley factory suffered what
was perhaps the greatest disaster in its 125-year history: a large part of the factory was accidentally
razed as the result of area bombing by
remained intact in the cellar was plundered and drunk by the Soviet troops
stationed in Budafok. Within just two weeks some 30,000 bottles of champagne
disappeared from the factory’s cellar.
During the
roughly 40-year period of Communism in
part of the state-owned Hungarovin conglomerate. Before the change of system
the factory had an annual capacity of 30 million bottles of champagne, 20-25
million of which were exported to the former
and the GDR. After the change of system, as part of the privatisation process
Törley together with Hungarovin was acquired by Henkell und Söhnlein. In 2005,
the wine and champagne production conglomerate was renamed the Törley Pezsgőpincészet
(Törley Champagne Cellar). Törley Pezsgőpincészet is today a prospering
business with an annual revenue of around HUF 14 billion (EUR 45 million) in
2006.
