What is there to say about Tokaji? Quite a lot as it happens! And have we found something truly astonishing! This is well worth reading.... they’re decidedly worth buying... the last of which is the wine to die for... before it’s too late!
History
First, some background information; it is not known how long the grape Furmint has been grown on the volcanic soils of this small beautiful plateau 1500 feet above sea level in Hungary, certainly millennia and well before roman times. The highly acidic Furmint grape, believed to be indigenous to the region, were cultivated and well documented in Tokaj during Roman occupation. Hungary was later invaded by the Mongols in 1241. Many of the spectacular underground cellars which are such a feature of the region were built during this turbulent period. The Ottoman Turks conquered much of what is now Hungary during the 16th Century. However the well-defended Tokaj region was never fully occupied, but was subject to raids and the threat of invasion throughout this period.
Legend has it; that at some stage during this time, the Tokaj vineyards were left un-harvested due to the Turkish threat. When the farmers returned the grapes had dried up and shrivelled, the concentration of sugars and acidity was remarked upon - the resulting wine was in the end of surpassing all previous quality, and this marked the birth of Tokaji Aszú. However, the actual techniques for Tokaji Aszú production were not fully refined until the 1630's.
It is generally accepted that Tokaji is the first of the great botrytis sweet wines, already well established by the mid 17th Century and more than 100 years before “noble rot” was discovered in Germany and France. By 1700 it became the first ever Controlled Appellation, with 1st, 2nd and 3rd class quality ratings, 155 years before the Bordeaux Classifications of France.
The most famous of all Tokaji wines is Aszu eszencia; but the rarest is simply called Essencia. Both wines, most highly regarded by royalty and the nobility of all Europe. The vineyards, mostly owned by the Hungarian aristocracy were by far the most valuable assets of the country, and Russia’s Catherine the Great claims to be one of the first foreign investors. She owned and “privately protected” with her own locally stationed infantry battalion, one of the most prestigious of all vineyard sites.
In the first years of the 18th century, the Transylvanian patriot and defender of the region, Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II, (1676 -1735) recognised the unique quality of Aszú wine and used the proceeds from Tokaji wine sales to finance his battle against Habsburg and Austrian domination of Hungary. In 1703, in the hope of cultivating an alliance with France, Rákóczi gave King Louis XIV some Tokaji wine from his own Tokaj estates as a gift. This was served at the French Royal court at Versailles, where it became known as Tokay. Delighted with the precious beverage, Louis XV of France offered a glass of Tokaji to Madame de Pompadour, referring to it as "Vinum Regum, Rex Vinorum" ("Wine of Kings, King of Wines"). This famous line is used to this day in the marketing of Tokaji wines.
After his final defeat in 1715, by Imperial decree, the Rákóczi family’s estates, including the highly regarded Szarvas vineyard became Hungarian Crown property. Emperor Franz Josef had a tradition of sending Queen Victoria Tokaji Aszú wine, as a gift, every year on her birthday, one bottle for every month she had lived, twelve for each year. On her eighty-first and final birthday in 1900, this totalled an impressive 972 bottles.
Another appreciative connoisseur was that great wine lover Thomas Jefferson who imported and served ‘rich Tokaji’ (‘for which I paid the princely sum of a guinea a bottle’) at his presidential banquets in the early 1800’s.
With the advent of the phylloxera plague in the 1880s (a decade later than in France), viniculture in Tokaj hit rock bottom. Production collapsed, and many vineyard owners went bankrupt. Gradually the vineyards were replanted on grafted rootstock, and there was a revival by the early 1900's, only for sales to again all but disappear with the advent of World War I. After the collapse of the monarchy in 1918, the Imperial vineyards were taken into state ownership. By the beginning of the 1930s, only five percent of the production could be sold. In 1948 all the major family estates were taken into state ownership where they remained until the collapse of communism in 1989.
Since the collapse of the communist regime, Tokaji is again experiencing a remarkable renaissance. First, investors came from France, Spain, Germany and England, but also from Hungary itself: local winemakers bought vineyards in excellent locations. Over time, the premium vineyards have been divided into smaller and smaller parcels, many are now in the hands of local artisanal producers and Pannon is one of these. During the Communist era, winemaking was merely competent, if seldom inspired, but this has all been changing since the mid 1990s, today and especially by Pannon, great wines are being made.
The modern day classifications for the sweet wines are as follows, depending on quality and sweetness, Aszueszencia is the most famous of all and even mentioned in the Hungarian National Anthem.
3 puttonyos = 60 grams per litre
4 puttonyos = 90 grams per litre
5 puttonyos = 120 grams per litre
6 puttonyos = 150 grams per litre
Aszú Eszencia = over 180 grams per litre
Eszencia = over 240 grams per litre
Tokaji Aszú
The basis of Tokaji Aszú is hand-selected, shrivelled botrytis-effected berries. The taste and ultimate quality of an Aszú wine depends on the number of baskets (puttonyos) filled with ripe berries . These baskets weigh on average 25 kilograms each, and are added to a cask (136 liters) of dry base wine. Consequently, the proportion between aszú berries and dry base wine is about 1:1 for a 6 puttonyos Aszú.
After several months of fermentation, the Aszú normally matures in cask for 3 to 8 years - traditionally through oxidative ageing with air contact. Its remarkable richness, counterbalanced with a bracing acidity characterizes this legendary dessert wine, which is one of the slowest maturating wines made anywhere on the planet, the finest examples take decades to mature and can last for a century or longer.
Eszencia
But the greatest, rarest, most sought after, and expensive of all Tokaji wine is Eszencia and can only be made in the greatest of vintages, on average one or two each decade. Hand-selected botrytis-affected berries, which are later needed for Aszú preparation, are gathered into a keg and kept there for a couple of days before the Aszú paste is prepared. Due entirely to the berries’ own weight alone, some highly concentrated juices of the finest quality will have accumulated on the bottom of the keg. This is the free-run juice via a small tap that Eszencia is made from. The fermentation process is incredibly slow, yielding an alcohol content of between 1.5 and 4% only after several years. Normally an Eszencia’s residual sugar content is between 400 and 500 grams/litre, but it can surpass this figure. One keg containing 25 kilograms of over-ripe Aszu berries produces only about one litre of Essencia. (If not sold individually, Essencia is added to the Aszú wines to improve them yet further).
Because of its enormous sugar content (balanced always though by tremendous acidity), often syrup-like texture and extremely low alcohol levels, Essencia is not really a wine in the conventional sense, but rather a unique elixir, the quintessence of the grape, with an almost supernatural concentration of taste and aroma, especially if it is very high in sugars and lower in alcohol. It's something that every wine aficionado dreams of tasting at least once, and to do so is likely to be a life-enhancing and never-forgotten experience.