I sympathise with the frustration of not being able to find a bottle, but I decided that was not a sufficient reason to suppress my excitement about wines

MY COLUMN this week is on the wonderful dry white wines of Hungary. It was a col- umn I had to think twice about writing.

Make that three times. I had originally wanted to go to Hungary to report the piece, given that so few of the dry whites are available in the United States. I have never been to Hungary, and I'm fas- cinated with the history, the work that has gone on there in the vineyards and the people who are doing it.

Had I had the opportunity to see things for myself, to get the feel and scent of the place, I think it would have made a great story, with some stun- ning visuals.

Alas, newspaper economics being what they are these days, the trip never became a priority. One day, I am sure, I will get there. Without that feet-on-the- ground experience, I won- dered at first whether the story would be worth writing from New York. The wines are obscure, and they are difficult to find. In fact, I'm already get- ting e-mails from people ask- ing me where to buy the wine in, say, Los Angeles or Albuquerque. I'm afraid I can't help you with that, but there are web sites that can offer assistance, such as wine- searcher.com.

I sympathise with the frus- tration of not being able to find a bottle, but I decided that was not a sufficient rea- son to suppress my excite- ment about these wines. They are still worth knowing about, aren't they? You may not find a bottle tomorrow, but maybe next month or next year.

Don't give up!

The third thing I thought about was the natural inclination on the part of many peo- ple, me included, to be drawn to what's familiar. When I still have so much to learn about Chianti, Riesling, Rioja, Bordeaux, you name it, why would I want to turn my atten- tion to dry furmint, to say nothing of Harslevelu and Juhfark? I tried to answer that in the column simply by saying that some of my most reward- ing experiences have come from unknown wines. There is a great joy in discovery, as I've learned again, and again, and again. I'm confident that if you've never had any of these wines, you are in for a treat.

As I look back on the columns I've written over the past six months, I see this has been a recurring theme. I've written about Spätburgunder from Germany, the Gemischter satz wines of Vienna and the stunningly good wines of the Jura, which, I have to admit, borders on an obsession. In this country, these are relatively obscure wines, all.

At the same time, over the past few years, another recur- ring theme (not of mine, but in wine journalism in general) has been the debate about whether wine is becoming increasingly homogenised.

Certainly, an international- isation of wine has taken place. No debate about it.

Nonetheless, at the same time, we have access to an incredi- ble diversity of wine grapes, wine styles and wine sources.

This makes clear, I think, that we are now living in the great- est time in history to be wine lovers. Do you feel the same way? What joyous discoveries have you made among wines that you had considered obscure? I can't wait to hear.