Arnstein's musings: Wines of Hungary: Tokay
During our drive trough Hungary this summer, we visited Hungarys two imporant wine-producing regions, Eger and Tokay, and I'm planning to write about both.
Tokay is situated among green rolling hills in eastern Hungary, and produces the wonderful Tokay Aszu, a wonderful dark golden and sweet wine.
Aszu is made from grapes harvested late in the season, often in November. This late harvesting enables the Botrytis cinerea (noble rot) to achieve maximum concentration giving the grapes a almost candied state. They are then crushed to make an extremely thick, sugary paste. This paste is added to the dry white base wine made from non-botrytized grapes. The number (usually 3-6) of basket-fulls of aszu-grapes (called puttonyos in Hungarian) classifies the wine.
Many Hungaryan nobles had cellars in this region, and we visited one of the most famous among them, the Rákóczi-cellars, in the town of Sarospatak. The cellar is very long (many kilometers) and lies next to the Rákóczi castle.
We stopped by the cellars after visiting the castle, and by luck came just in time for a guided tour with wine-tasting, and got the whole tour for ourselves. It was interesting walking around the maze-like structure filled with winebarrels and a humid climate. The tour concluded with a wine-tasting where we had the oppurtunity to taste several wines produced by the company that now owns the cellars, Château Pajzis, owned by a vineyard owner from Bordeaux.
We tasted both Tokaji Szamorodni (dry and sweet), a Furmint and some Aszus. All were good, but the top Aszu's were wonderful, well balanced, and truly a king of wines.
Aged wine from the cellars, covered in mould
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