Here's an article from 2007 from a magazine I used to work for:
MAZOVIAN CABERNET
No joke: real wine is now being produced in Poland.
Very soon another vintage of Polish wine will ready for drinking – and not cherry or currant ‘wine’, mind you, but real wine made from grapes. The beginning of autumn is the most important season for all the Northern hemisphere’s winemakers and several hundred of them are in Poland. From a global perspective their number is fairly insignificant. According to the Polish Central Statistical Office (GUS), in 2005 there were almost 2,000 vineyards in Poland but their total area amounted to a mere 155 hectares. While the unofficial number is really 200, the winegrowing areas are still minuscule.
Hungary’s smallest winegrowing region – Somló – which occupies the slopes of only one small volcano, covers an area of more than 700 hectares and is considered to be very small. Meanwhile in Poland, a vineyard which takes up more than one hectareis thought rather sizeable. Despite that the ranks of winemaking enthusiasts are getting bigger and bigger and these are no small-time hobbyists either, they are people seriously involved in the production and distribution of wines which aspire to meet all EU requirements and be “good” rather than just “interesting”.
The end of June 2006 saw the gathering of several dozen wine producers in Warsaw. They had come to attend the first ever Polish Winemakers’ Convention organized by the Polish Institute for Grapevine and Wine (!) and Wine magazine. Among the participants were only those winemakers whose vineyards are bigger than five acres and who grow the types of vines which have been approved by the EU. A dozen winemakers decided to present their wines at the wine-tasting event. There was a sweet Cabernet Sauvignon from the outskirts of Warsaw and the almost mineral Hibernal from near Kazimierz Dolny on the Vistula river; there was the appetizing Seyval Blanc from a vineyard close to Nowa Sól in the Lubuskie region; there were red wines from the Rondo grape, very popular in Poland, hailing from such seemingly unusual places as Suwałki or the Mazuria lake district; there was the excellent Sibera from the Podkarpacie region which would undoubtedly win a blind-tasting competition with many a Moravian wine. The first Polish Winemakers’ Convention has proved that good wines are being produced all over Poland.
The Polish winemaking tradition had been dead for years. However, those who associate it only with the Zielona Góra region or Krakow’s wine cellars where tokaj used to age for Polish noblemen are obviously quite wrong. Grapevines were commonly grown in the south of the country, which is clearly visible in the surviving names of villages and small settlements. Gołuchowo in the Great Poland region still boasts the remains of a vineyard from 1878. Wine was also commonly made in Podole, outside the borders of modern Poland. Wine parades were still organized in Zaleszczyki [a town in Podole in what is now western Ukraine] until the 1930s.
Few modern Polish winemakers can take advantage of their ancestors’ knowledge of where to set up a vineyard. The Italian or French winemakers do not have this problem – best areas for growing vine are already well established there. The locations of new Polish vineyards have often been the result just blind-guesses. However, it seems that the times of “chance choices” are over. Kolonia Rusek Vineyard is a case in point. This small vineyard, located in the close vicinity of Ryn in the Mazuria lake district, produces wonderful wines. Its owner, Wiktor Bruszewski, carefully chose the place for planting his vines: a steep slope by the lake, facing south-western for good exposure to the sun but well protected from the wind. He was aided by one of the top Polish specialists in vine-growing and winemaking, Wojciech Bosak from the Polish Institute for Grapevine and Wine. Some years ago Bosak was involved mainly in organizing wine-tasting events for wine connoisseurs; now dozens of people enrol to his viticulture and winemaking courses.
Roman Myśliwiec is the guardian spirit of the Polish winemaking industry. He is certainly the most experienced producer and, above all, a tireless experimenter. In 1982 he set up his Golesz Vineyard near Jasło; today he grows five thousand grapevines in the area of one and a half hectares – many of them sent to him from research stations in Hungary, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Germany, as well as from the USA and Canada (countries whose climate is fairly cool, too).
Myśliwiec admits that his main aim is to check the suitability of particular varieties for Polish weather conditions. He makes his living selling vine saplings and has a considerable circle of “disciples” – people who studied viticulture and winemaking in Golesz. It is difficult to name a type of wine which this ‘Polish Dionysus’ has not tried to produce: white and red, sweet and dry, reinforced, and late-harvest wines. Some day his followers are bound to erect a monument in his memory, for he has been a true pioneer, blazing the trail for those who in a couple of years’ time will be involved in large-scale production of wine in Poland.
The Jaworek family are Myśliwiec’s polar opposite. They are the owners of Poland’s biggest vineyard, measuring 16.8 hectares. They started in 2000 as hobbyists; now they produce wine, experiment with different honeys, and run a sapling plantation. Their enterprise can serve as a model for many winemakers. Wine production is for them not only part of a business, but also a labour of love. “We wish to recreate the grapevine grafts which used to be grown in Lower Silesia before 1945,” they write in their statement.
On 3 September the Miękinia Vineyard represented its region in the Zielona Góra Grape Harvest, a wine festival held in the old winemaking-capital of Poland. There was a grape harvest market and a grape harvest funfair for the children; the Winemaker’s Cottage organized meetings with the wine producers; and there was also a nightly Bachus run along with a Bachus Cup tennis tournament.
In Poland it is still easier to import wine from New Zealand than to launch Polish wines on the domestic market. This is the result of the costs imposed by the laws concerning winemaking. According to these laws, wine can only be produced in the area of the defined as a tax depot. Roman Myśliwiec maintains that the conditions under which such a depot can be run are very difficult for even the large producers to fulfil. “If we are talking about producing two to three thousand litres of wine annually, which would be worth several hundred thousand zloty, these requirements do seem quite ridiculous. And this is exactly the scale of production which the majority of Polish farmers are interested in – those who have already set up their vineyards or are planning to do so,” says the ‘Polish Dionysus’. “Permits to run a tax depot are issued by the head of the Customs Office. He can refuse to issue them on the basis of such an enigmatic buzzword phrase as a “threat to the major public interest”. The permit can also be withdrawn (which means halting production) for being even seven days behind with one’s social security payment (ZUS),” complains Myśliwiec.
Social security is another serious problem for the winemakers. According to the Polish law, they have to make ZUS payments, and not – like other farmers – the lower KRUS rates. “Producing wine by growing grapevines is farming! It is nature that decides if the harvest is good or bad. You cannot expect a winemaker to pay ZUS like an entrepreneur. After all, like any other farmer, they can suffer from drought, hailstorms, or freezing weather and then there will be no wine,” says Bruszewski.
Fortunately, Polish winemakers do not seem to be discouraged by these problems. They firmly believe that quite soon they will not only organize wine-tasting events but also sell their wines. And that their vineyards will become a major tourist attraction for agro-tourism enthusiasts. They also believe that their wine will get better and better every year.
Polish wine is still rare in shops, so it is difficult to recommend one in particular. Some names, however, are worth remembering. It might be interesting to follow the vineyards’ development and – for the time being - look for the wines at Polish trade fairs and wine-tasting events.
GÓRZYKOWO on the Oder – Stara Winna Góra Vineyard
NOWE MIASTECZKO – Marek Senator
MIĘKINIA – Jaworek Vineyards
RUSEK WIELKI – Kolonia Rusek
PODGÓRZ near KAZIMIERZ DOLNY – Pańska Góra Vineyard
DAROMIN – Płochocki Vineyard
JASŁO – Golesz Vineyard
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