PREAMBLE

We Authentists hereby subscribe to the legacy of our ancestors, who lived on these lands and farmed them for thousands of years, growing grapes and making wine to delight the spirit and celebrate God's goodness. As their descendants, we want to use our native land to produce wines of consistent quality, so we can preserve this land and pass it on to our children healthy and beautiful.

We consider Pannonia, once part of the Roman Empire, to be the birthplace of our common wine growing culture. It was the Romans who lay the foundation of the laws that winemakers had to abide by, as well as the methods of wine production used by all the different wine-loving nations living between the Alps and Carpathians today.

As the passing of time became history, the community of the Central European nations was formed; and in good times and bad, through pain and joy, it survived to this day. The common spirit, as well as traditions and values shared by the peoples of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, was also the framework for wine and the traditions of its making. Today our history allows us to follow up on everything that people have created on this journey, through traditional winemaking, and the production of nature friendly, authentic wines.

The often too sudden transition from traditional viticulture and viniculture to modern procedures can overshadow, even destroy local vineyards and winery specificities, leading to the loss of identity for the wine growers. There was a knock-on effect in the style of wine produced as the old sloping vineyard plots were abandoned, resulting not only in the loss of authenticity, but in overgrown, unattractive hillsides where the vineyards had for centuries represented the genius loci of the landscape.

We unite here, in order to maintain an authentic viticulture and viniculture in the Danube region, sculpted by the 2,840 km long river. This region has always been a crossroads, not only of peoples, but also of the “Pontus” and the Western European grape varieties. This is where our solidarity and common spirit had been created; and where the indigenous grape varieties that unite and symbolize us have originated.

We recognize the importance of retaining both our individual and the shared identity, and we value the co-operation with wineries and regions that share our views and agree with the Charter of the Authentist.