The Wine Lover

Ferenc Rákóczi II helped pay for a war with wine. The prince owned a large share of the Tokaj vineyards, and in 1703 — the year he took up arms against the Habsburgs — he sent bottles from those estates to Louis XIV while hunting for a French ally. The Sun King's verdict, vinum regum, rex vinorum, wine of kings and king of wines, is still printed on Tokaji labels three centuries later. Aszú money went on soldiers.

The Uzhhorod bronze remembers the drinker rather than the commander. Rákóczi sits on a wine barrel with a bunch of grapes in his hand, in the small square beside the Centre of Hungarology on vul. Olbrakhta — directly above a set of old wine cellars, which is the whole joke.

Why this prince, in this city

Zakarpattia's claim on Rákóczi is a family one. His mother, Ilona Zrínyi, held Munkács Castle — Mukachevo, 40km east — against an imperial siege for two and a half years before surrendering in January 1688. Fifteen years later the rebellion that carries her son's name began in the same corner of the Carpathians: the serfs around Munkács rose first, and on 15 June 1703 Rákóczi crossed the Verecke Pass with a small force to take command of them. The fighting ran to 1711.

So the figure on the barrel is not a borrowed celebrity, and the grapes are not decoration. Those vineyards bankrolled the war he led.

The barrel and what is under it

This is a crouching job, not a photograph-from-across-the-street job. The modelling repays it — the hoops of the barrel, the fall of the prince's coat, the grapes held out towards whoever has bothered to stop. Getting there takes a deliberate turn off the main tourist line, into the courtyard of the Hungarian studies centre off vul. Olbrakhta.

Under the paving are the cellars. Wine has been kept below this square for a long time, which is why the prince is sitting on the lid rather than standing on a pedestal: he has come up for air with the evidence in his fist.

A toast to the winemakers

The unveiling, on 26 September 2015, fell in the city's birthday weekend and was dedicated to Ukraine's best winemakers — a group drawn overwhelmingly from these hills. The slopes around Berehove, Mukachevo and Uzhhorod have been under vine for centuries, and the autumn crush is still the reason a good number of people come at all.

Credit for the sculpture is split: Uzhhorod's run of bronze miniatures began with Mykhailo Kolodko in 2010 and has since passed largely to Roman Murnyk, and guidebooks name both men for this one. Nobody in town seems troubled by it.

Come in the afternoon, when the courtyard takes the sun. Then do the obvious thing — the Serednje cellars, half an hour down the Mukachevo road, run four kilometres into volcanic rock and have held a steady 12°C since the Dobó family started storing wine down there in 1557.