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The Selector Guide to Tokaj - Hungary's Home of Sweet Wine

A crop of young oenophiles is breathing new life into Hungary’s famed UNESCO-protected wine region.

Gergely Somogyi is recounting the story of Tokaji Aszú. We are deep underground, in the labyrinthine cellars of Patricius Winery. Mould creeps fantastically across the drystone walls, a spongy mass that twinkles silver in the half-light. It is, says Somogyi, the sign of a healthy cellar.

With his hipster fedora, waistcoat and handlebar moustache twirled into pencil-sharp points, the Tokaj expert could be from another era. He cuts a dapper figure as he leads us deep into the bowels of this ancient cellar, past the neat rows of oak barrels marked with their number and vintage in chalk.

Like many great discoveries, Tokaji Aszú was a happy accident. An Ottoman invasion and a late harvest, some five hundred years ago, set the scene for the botrytis cinerea to flourish. Shrouded in autumn rains and mists, noble rot attacked the grapes. Temperate afternoons baked them dry. It shrivelled the grapes like raisins, concentrating the sugars in delightful and unexpected ways - the wine from it captivated Europe.

Aszú - what the western world knows as Tokay - is a wine of the noble rot but of nobility. Louis XIV took one sip and pronounced it the “wine of kings, king of wines". It has been immortalised in novels and enshrined in the Hungarian national anthem. The emperor, Franz Ferdinand, famously gifted Queen Victoria a dozen bottles for every year of her birth a grand total of 972 bottles on her penultimate birthday.

In the heart of Oremus, where Aszú was first historically made. (Image credit: Belinda Luksic).

A visit to Tokaj though, is never just about sweet wine. It’s also about a wine-making tradition that stretches back 1,000 years, of nobility and communism, whitewashed villages and terrace vines, and beneath it all, the intricate maze of 500-year-old cellars tunnelled into the volcanic rock. These days it is also about single estate dry whites - the best of these grown on the slopes of the Zemplén mountains - and the young winemakers breathing new life into this underrated wine region almost destroyed by the mass-production of communism. It was this that had brought me to Tokaj. But in the birthplace of botrytis, sweet wine is never far from view.

Back in the blinking light, Somogyi leads us on a tasting of five wines grown in Patricius’ 65 hectares of premier cru vineyards he splashes into Riedel Furmint glasses. Patricius is known for its award-winning Tokay, but in recent years, the single estate whites have also garnered international praise. The 2018 furmint we sample is one of these, a delicate balance of fruit, fine oak, and soft minerality with a salt-lashed finish. It’s excellent, and followed by a luscious 2018 Borház Aszú, a 6-puttonyos sticky that deservedly won Gold at the 2023 Decanter awards.

The key to a good Tokaji Aszú is its puttonyos, a measure of the number of dried grapes added to the barrel during the fermentation. It nods to the puttony, the wooden basket that workers carried the grapes they hand-picked during harvest. The best Tokay are 5 or 6 puttonyos, made with a minimum 120 grams of sugar for every litre of Aszú and barrel-aged in oak a minimum of 18 months. Wines with less sugar than this are deemed ‘late harvest’.

Traditional wine cellars of Tolcsva, North Hungary. (Image credit: Richard Semik, via Getty Images).

Gergely Somogyi guides visitors on a Tokaji tour. (Image credit: Belinda Luksic).

Only six grape varieties can be grown and used in Tokay. Furmint and Hárslevelü are the stars, both high in acidity to counter the cloying sweetness of the botrytis grapes. Smaller quantities of Sárga Muskotály, Kövérszölö, Zéta (a crossing of Furmint and Bouvier), and Kabar (a crossing of Hárslevelű and Bouvier) can also be used.

Surprisingly, Pinot Noir is also grown in Tokaj, a ‘‘white label” grape I sample during a degustation dinner paired with wind at Andrassy Kuria & Spa, a manor house-turned luxury hotel by investment consortium Botaniq Collections. The hotel is one of only a handful of luxury stays in Tokay, replete with a wellness spa with Finnish and dry saunas, a cave whirlpool and fine dining restaurant. It’s next to Stéphanie Berecz’s Kikelet, and her yeasty sparkling and fabulous floral whites.

The afternoon is a whistle-stop tour of Hercegkút, a Swabian village first settled in 1750 by Germans from the Black Forest and famous for its ancient cellars, reminiscent of Hobbit holes. The afternoon brings us to Tállya, and an e-cycle with Marton Estate winemaker Peter Marton, a two-hour tour up to the upper terraces and the hilltop castle ruins at Palace Hill, near Mad. Our final stop is Holdvölgy, a fun treasure hunt-style tasting experience in the estate’s impressive, two-kilometre-long, three-level underground cellars.

The fairytale-like setting of Villany, Hungary (Image credit: Getty Images).

ORIGINS OF TOKAY

“Tokay came back to life with the fall of communism,” says Gabor Banfalvi. We are in the atmospheric depths of Oremus Vineyards. Stacks of Aszú bottles glow amber in the glimmering light. I know the story of Aszú, but hearing it in the place where the first Aszú was made, gives me goosebumps.

“It was like looking for treasures in this really grand but forgotten part of the world. It is coming back really strong. The quality, the passion, the people are really working for that,” says Gabor. Gabor and wife Carolyn are behind Taste Hungary, a bespoke tour company founded in 2008 to give travellers a more authentic side of Hungary. Along with sommelier-led wine tastings in Budapest’s Palace District, they hold private day tours to the best cellar doors in Somlo, Eger, Etyek and Tokaj.

Designated in 1717 by royal decree and protected by UNESCO, Tokaj boasts a winemaking tradition that stretches back 1,000 years. Its unique terroir comes from a bedrock of 700 dormant volcanoes, and the mineral rich loess, rhyolite and tufa soils. There are 5,500 hectares of cultivated vines divided into 400 crus or premier vineyards. Since communism’s fall and the rebuilding of this once-great wine region, there are now more than 200 wineries, from ‘garage’ cellars to international wine houses. The wines produced are complex, rich and intensely mineral.

The atmospheric skies about Hungarian vines. (Image credit: Belinda Luksic).

History is never far away in Somlo (Image credit: Gergo Rugli via Getty Images).

Gabor pulls in at Tarcal for a bird’s eye view of Tokaj. The sun is setting, casting golden rays across the quilted fields and vineyard. It’s as fine as the sweet amber liquid that first put this region on the world stage. Our final stop is in Tokaj, at the historic cellars of Erzsébet Pince, not far from the confluence of the Tisza and Bodrog rivers. These historic cellars date from the 17th century and offer excellent single-vineyard dry wines and Tokaji Aszú. Its said they were rented by Russian tsars to store Aszú wine purchased for the imperial court.

It reminds me of a story about Catherine the Great. She was said to have been so attached to the noble rot, she had a Cossack detachment permanently stationed in Tokaj to guard the bottles for the Russian Imperial household. Looking around this cellar at the bottles shrouded in thick layers of mould and dust, it’s easy to believe that perhaps some had been left behind.

Descending into the depths on a cellar treasure hunt. (Image credit: Belinda Luksic).

Oremus Aszú, wines fit for a king... or queen. (Image credit: Belinda Luksic).

HUNGARY'S TOP WINE REGIONS

Hungary boasts 22 wine regions, with many grape varieties not found anywhere else in the world. Some regions are small, with cellar doors by appointment only.

Others are home to international wineries, spa hotels and cellar restaurants. These four are a stand-out.

Somlo, Hungary’s smallest wine region

Balaton is the catch-all for six wine regions surrounding Lake Balaton, Europe’s largest lake. Somlo is the smallest, a storybook landscape on the slopes of an extinct volcano, fast gaining a reputation for elegant wines reminiscent of Mount Etna. Juhfark is its signature grape, a variety grown almost exclusively in the basalt soil, with a high minerality that cellars well over time.

Somlo's best cellar doors: Györgykovács, Fekete Bela, Speigelberg

Villany, land of the big red

Ask any Hungarian to recommend a wine region, and they’ll invariably say Villany. Blessed with a Mediterranean climate, this PDO region near the border of Croatia, in the south, is home to bold, oak-driven reds that wouldn’t look out of place in Bordeaux. It’s also a pretty spot, sprinkled with hot spring hotels, fine dining and cellar doors easily reached on foot or bicycle. Villany’s main grape is Cabernet Franc, but increasingly Kékfrankos is also being planted, a grape with rich blackberry notes and chewy flavours.

Villany's best cellar doors: Bock, A. Gere Atilla, Koch and Sauska

Etyek-Buda, the Sparkling wine region that rivals Champagne

It’s dubbed the Napa of Hungary, but Etyek’s limestone terroir and cool climate more closely resemble Champagne. Set amid rolling hills, striking distance from Budapest, the tiny wine region - one of three that make up sprawling Etyek-Buda - is one to watch thanks to a new appellation control giving just four terrace rows and a dozen high-profile winemakers the sole right to call their sparkling wine pezsgö - a word that ironically means both sparkling and Champagne.

Etyek-Buda's best cellar doors: Nadas Winery, Etyek-Kuria, Hernyak

Eger, home to the mythical Bull’s Blood

White wines were once a mainstay of Eger, but it’s the red blend Bull’s Blood, or Egri Bikavér, that is its most famous drop. Mass-produced during communism, this full-bodied blend, made using a minimum 30 per cent Kekfrankos, is once again winning awards. Eger’s best vineyards surround the eponymous Baroque town, where a cool climate and semi-volcanic soil produce wines that are full-bodied and fruity. Szépasszony Völgy, about 20 minutes from town, is the place to sample old-school wines at historic cellar doors. There are 200 in total, and close to two dozen open to the general public.

Eger's best cellar doors: St. Andrea, Thummerer and Almagyar, Érseki Szőlőbirtok