MY WELL-THUMBED copy of the 1978 Good Wine Guide reveals the most widely available red wine in the country at that time was Bull’s Blood, from Hungary.

Although my wine of the week shows Hungary can still produce great-value wines, they are quite hard to find. The easy availability of excellent, fruity wine from the southern hemisphere provided stiff competition for Hungarian producers who worked hard to establish private wineries in the post-Communist era.

Only the great sweet, and fewer dry wines, from Tokaji have held their place, but other fine wines are made in Hungary too as I found out when I visited the Villány-Siklós and Szekszárd regions in the south of the country this month. I discovered some remarkable wines are now trickling back into the UK.

Both regions are on limestone hills overlooking the Danube Valley with the Great Plain of Hungary beyond.

In the early 18th Century, German families were encouraged to settle in the area, still depopulated after years of war with the Turks. Their descendants are among the most influential names in the wine industry there today, including Takler, Bock and Wunderlich.

Under Communist rule, which ended in 1989, no one was allowed to own more than half a hectare of vineyards. Many families built tiny wineries in the middle of plots of land and cut cellars into the soft rock below. These still dot the landscape. Hobby wine-making is a local passion. But ambitious private wineries have bought up land, and are building sparkling new wineries.

The Takler and Bock wineries have fabulous guest houses attached to them. Andras Takler, son of winery owner Ferenc, admits the local wine industry is a work in progress; but it’s clear the progress is impressive. In Szekszárd about two dozen commercial wineries sell their wine in bottle.

Csaba Malatinszky, who learned to make wine in France in the Médoc, was attracted to the area because he felt it had potential. When he set up his winery in 1997 he brought in help from Bordeaux University to ensure the vines he planted were suited to the local conditions.

“Although I wanted to make good red wines,” he said, “I realised the region was good for white too. What’s so great about this place is there are so many varieties planted: you can do experiments to see what works best.”