Toast with Tokaji Aszú wine – The taste of the feast

Have you ever thought of the fragrance and taste of the festive season? Sweet spices, cinnamon, vanilla, dried fruits. Impressions just if we had spoken about the Aszú wine of Tokaj. Tokaji Aszú wine is an excellent choice on all festive occasions, including Christmas. But are we familiar with the uniqueness of this wine type at all?

A special microclimate in Tokaj wine region facilitates growing aszú berries, which is unique and not found in any other wine regions; indeed, the initiator is actually a special fungus, Botrytis cinerea. The vicinity of the two rivers, Bodrog and Tisza has a crucial role in the process, the morning haze caused by the large water table, as well as the dry weather daytime both support formation of aszú berries. The noble rot attacks healthy and ripen berries and initiates botrytisation process. Botrytis makes the skin of the berries thinner, thus the moisture content of the berry can evaporate, so sugar, acids and aromas become more and more concentrated inside. Furmint is the most important local grape variety with its tremendous acid condition yields, but all the other grape varieties of the wine region are also able to be botrytised well.

Since botrytisation within the bunches is uneven, therefore, aszú berries should be picked several times throughout the whole harvesting season. This process demands enormous and careful manual labour, so that even an experienced picker cannot collect more than 6-7 kg aszú berries a day. Depending on the vintage, it may take several harvesting rounds in the same plot. Only the well-botrytised berries should be collected, so pickers need to return even 4-5 times back to a single plant during the harvesting season. Even this particular harvesting method can explain the higher prices of these wines, which requires enormous amount of manual labour, and it is unique all over the wine regions making sweet wines in the world.

After the moisture content of the berries has been evaporated, aszú berries are soaked either in wine or in a fermenting must of the same vintage for 1-2 days. Regular stirring helps to disrupt the berries and release their inner content. At the end of soaking, the generated material known as “aszú dough” is collected, then it gets pressed, and the extracted must is fermented further into Tokaji Aszú wine. Tokaji Aszú wines should be matured at least 18 months in barrels followed by 12 months in bottles before being commercialised.