Ep. 195 Monty Waldin interviews Sue Tolson (Freelance Writer and Editor) | Education meets Business

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. This podcast is brought to you by Native Grape Odyssey. Native Grape Odyssey is an educational project financed by the European Union to promote European wine in Canada, Japan, and Russia. Enjoy. It's from Europe. Hello. This is the Italian wine podcast. My name is Wonty. What did my guest today is Sue Tolson. Sue is based in Hungary, and she specializes in Hungary and its wines. Yep. Correct. So how did you end up in the start factor basis? Well, how did you end up in Hungary? I went there about twenty years ago to teach business English strangely enough. And But you're a linguist So I'm a linguist originally. So I studied French and Italian, and then ended up with Hungarian and German as well. And I can As you as you do. As you do. Yeah. I got kind of stuck outside the UK, not the whole time in Hungary, spent some time Italy, sometime in Germany, sometime in Poland, but kind of got drawn back to to Hungary a few years ago. Am I right in saying that Hungarian is one of the world's most difficult languages? I I believe so. Yes. I think it was extremely difficult. I was much younger when I tried to learn it for the first time. I had a lot of friends who company, and I'm quite sure if I try to learn it now, it would not be quite so successful. Why is it such a complicated language? Because it doesn't have any relationship to anything else. You know, people think it's connected to Finnish, and it has a the language has a kind of similar structure, but the words are not the and it's full of all these kind of weird vowels with dull accents. And so you look at words and you think I haven't got a clue how I can say that, and it's the same with the wine regions, the grapes, and so on. Okay. So what did you do before that? I was a business English trainer and translator. I still translate, but I don't really teach business English anymore. Did you work with a lot of people? Is it you're just enough for general companies rather than wine companies or? It's general companies. I do some some wine things as well. I'm, translating part of a book about Tokai at the moment. I've translated various cookery books and books about Hungary, but I also do kind of boring stuff about banks and, actually, a police journal for Austria, which is A police journal for Austria. Fascinating. I have to say nine thousand pages or something? No. No. It's just basically, it's it's some articles that they're gonna put into, into an international edition every year. And, yeah, that's quite interesting the topics that you find in this. Okay. So you're an Italian minor expert as well. Yes. I am. So what does that mean for you when you're, in Hungary? How do you use that skill? Well, I'm hoping to to teach more about about Italian wines, and I I write, on one of the websites where I write for generally, cord wine. So sofa, which is basically focused on central and east of Europe. It wasn't my choice of name. It's Daniel Eche, who's the, editor in chief. It was his choice. It's to do with an old family sofa that they had and, yeah, the fact that everyone sits on this same sofa. So what is the market like for in general in Hungary. And where does the Italian wine fit? Well, the wine market in Hungary would say it's quite split between quite low level basic wine and and high level wine. There's a bit of a gap in the middle, I think. And, not only for and of course we're a wine producing country, so it's consumed primarily Hungarian wine, but there is Italian wine as well. And I think you see a similar split there. You have kind of low, supermarket low level. Wines and then not much in the middle, few a few wines in specialist shops, and then you have much more premium wines like Barolo and Bruno and so on, things that are people are learning about wine want to try. Do people buy mainly from shops, or was it drinking in pubs and restaurants? I think it's both. People will buy from shops, they buy from specialist shops. A lot of people also buy directly from the winery. It's also drinking in pubs, and, what's very popular in the summer is Spritzer. So, you know, it's not so much a beer drinking country. It's more wide drinking country, and you have a great variety of different, like, variations on spritzer, which is called Frge in Hungarian, depending on the ratio of soda to water. And it's not unknown to see like Hungarian dry ice drink guys drinking like a pink pint, which is basically a rose spritzer. Really. But do they do that? Because it's obviously quite a continental climate. It can get very cold in winter but very hot in summer. That's true. So I guess that's your sort of hydrating whilst getting a little bit tipsy. Yeah. Exactly. It's refreshing, but you don't get too drunk and you can keep drinking it all day if that's what you want to do. What about, are there any sort of, like, Italian or restaurants that have an Italian theme, for example, in the Goodapest? Oh, yeah. There's quite a range of Italian restaurants and there's there's one street which is almost known as Italian street now because there's a Italian wine bar, which actually has a a really good selection of Italian wines, including a lot of indigenous varieties that you wouldn't find elsewhere. So I'd say that's the go to for Italian wine. They have a Gilarteria. They have a restaurant, but you also have quite a few more Italian and restaurants dotted through the city. But I would say that's the one of the best. So is there any kind of feedback on that restaurant in, in terms of its success? Or are people, a Hungarian's kinda curious about foreign quotes, foreign wines? I think Well, they've been patriotic and many people are curious. So it's very popular at the moment in Hungary to do all the WSTT qualifications and to learn about wine. That's wine spirit education trust. Yeah. And, So, you know, people are curious if they're doing this to to try other wines. I think the vast majority of people who are just drinking wine as you know, just to drink wine and don't know too much about it are not that bothered, and they might think, oh, I've got an Italian wine. That's exotic. That's interesting. I'll try that, but they're more interested in the price, I think, at that level. But I think there's a big, a big segment of people who are interested in quality wine and also connected to the wine tourism in Hungary that people will go around and visit. They'll also go and visit Italian regions and French regions that they'll travel outside Hungary as well too. So what would you suggest to an Italian wine trade body or even Italian producers? How do you crack the Hungarian market? I think it would be quite difficult because Hungarian are very patriotic. And of course, it's a wine producing nation, and most of the wine is produced there. But I think the way to crack it will be moved to go for the mid segment because there's not very much there at the moment. There's a lot of, like, bottom shelf supermarket wines, and there's a lot of top level wines, but there's not very much of these sort of medium drinking wines in the middle, except maybe prossecco. Right. So that's a popular wine then. It's a brand that people know. Yeah. Procecco is definitely a brand that people know. But things like Bruno or Barola, maybe less off the radar I think that's often, yeah, of because of the price. I mean, obviously, Hungary was at an Eastern European country, and the purchasing power of people reflects this, and also their knowledge about wines. People also tend to refer slightly sweet wines if they don't know too much about wine. But I think, you know, people who know about wine, things like Bernelo and Barolo are not off the radar for these people. They're very interested also in Aetna and and, Babaresco. Interesting. But I would say more about red wine. They're interested than Really the white. Even though their most famous wine is tokka, which is white and sweet. Yes. Mainly sweet. Yeah. But at no. I'm thinking more of Italian wise, in this case, they if you ask people about, okay, white Italian wise, do you know? These will be the ones that they come up with these red names rather than the white names. Yeah. Sure. But Hungary does certainly produce a lot of white wine, and, there is more white wine costume than red. Okay. Just wanna say thanks to my guest today, Sue Tolsan, when we're at, based in Hungary, Writing for wine sofa. We didn't have a sofa for you today, just a very uncomfortable. A small, uncomfortable chair and a small cut off. Yeah. It's, it actually this is a part time greenhouse as well. It's just too hot. It's green. Sorry. Yeah. And we tomato is very popular. Oh, good. Excellent. Take some time with me. Yeah. Quite high humidity. Plenty of light. And we got, obviously, water and stuff in the studio as well. So anyway, I should say thanks to my guests today's suit, awesome. Thank you. Thank you. This podcast has been brought you by Native Grape Odyssey, discovering the true essence of high quality wine from Europe. Find out more on native grape Odyssey dot e u. Enjoy. It's from Europe. Follow Italian wine podcast on Facebook and Instagram.