Tokaj

The documented life of the region is long and unusually continuous. Tokaj's council states that the region's history has been documented since 1561, and that throughout it vine-growing always took place inside the triangle marked by the three Sátor hills — Tokaj, Abaújszántó and Sátoraljaújhely. The boundary has been redrawn since, notably in 1898, but the shape of the growing area on the map has stayed recognisably the same for four and a half centuries.

The 1737 decree did not arrive from nowhere. In 1707 the state apparatus of the Rákóczi war of independence ordered a national classification of Hungary's wine regions, sorting them into five groups; only Tokaj-Hegyalja received first-class ranking, and the council notes that the role of the individual vineyard began to be understood then, for quality and for trade. A second national classification in 1720 used three classes, and the larger part of Tokaj-Hegyalja fell into the first.

Statute followed classification twice before the delimitation. The council's timeline records legal regulation of Tokaj vine and wine production in 1723, again in 1729, and again in 1741. The 1737 entry sits inside that run: the regulation of Tokaj-Hegyalja, in which the delimitation of the wine region took shape as the basis of origin protection. Read in sequence, 1737 is the moment a working regulatory habit acquired a boundary.

An estate inside the region keeps the same dates independently. Disznókő's published chronology gives 1737 as the year Tokaj was declared a delimited wine region by royal decree, with Tokaj becoming the official name of the region, and dates a classification of Tokaj's vineyards to 1732, collected by the viticultural expert János Matolai and published between 1735 and 1749 in Mátyás Bél's Notitia Hungariae. Most of the estate's present vineyards appear in it as first growths.

How far the claim reaches is disputed, and the disputants are Tokaj's own institutions. The Tokaji Hegyközségi Tanács writes that the delimitation was defined "a világon először", first in the world; the regional tourism body hedges the same event to "one of the first appellations in the world (in 1737!)". Those are the region's framings, named here as theirs. What is not in dispute is the year, the decree, and the boundary it drew around Tokaj.

The earliest record names a stock, not an inventor. Tokaj town's account states that on the currently accepted position one can first speak of aszú in the Hegyalja area around 1500, on the evidence of a Garay family division letter recording seventy barrels and fifty-two kegs of aszú-grape wines held in the Tokaj cellar. Tokaj town calls it the earliest documentation known to refer to a concretely named stock of aszú.

A second claim runs through a lexicographer and his editor. On István Balassa's authority, Tokaj town reports that the first mention of aszú occurs in Szikszay Fabricius Balázs's nomenclature, in the form "vinum passum asszu szeőleő bor". The work was published in 1590 but had been written over many years before 1576. A third record, again on Balassa, is a concretely known quantity of aszú from the Nagyváti vineyard at Tarcal in 1636.

The documents and the legend do not agree, and Tokaj town says so directly: the Garay division letter places the making of aszú wine a good decade earlier than the other early records, and the 1500 dating sits a century and a half before 1650. The honest position is four separate claims with four owners — the Garay letter, Szikszay Fabricius, the Tarcal record of 1636, and the Szepsi Laczkó Máté story — not one origin.

Ownership changed first, and quality followed. Tokaj town records that after the Second World War altered ownership forms and market conditions constrained the tradition, vine-growing areas passed from private cellars and estates into common state control, losing their individuality — which the town names as one of the preconditions for working correctly with wine. What was lost was not technique but the unit that carried it: the individual holding.

The council's timeline gives the structure. Between 1950 and 1990 several state farms and cellar operations merged into the Tokaj-Hegyalja state farm wine combine, the legal predecessor of the Tokaj Kereskedőház. The state winery bought up smallholders' grapes and organised both production and the wine trade — one buyer, one production plan, and a region of growers reduced to suppliers of raw material into it.

The turn is dated to a single year in the council's record: 1990, the start of privatisation in the Tokaj wine region and the founding of the Tokaj Renaissance association. Statutory hegyközség organisations — the local wine communities that still administer the region — were created in 1995. An independent state viticulture and oenology research institution was re-established for the region at Tarcal in 2005, on the former treasury estate.

Foreign capital arrived within two years of the opening. AXA Millésimes acquired Disznókő in 1992 and grouped a series of historically contiguous vineyards around the winery. The estate is candid about what it bought: most of the vineyard had previously been planted and cultivated intensively, and the vines were in poor shape at the time of purchase. Replanting began in 1994, planned at much higher density.

The listing is of a landscape, not a vineyard. The council records that the UNESCO World Heritage committee added the Tokaj wine region to the list in 2002 as a cultural landscape, and the regional tourism body states that its winemaking culture and traditions have been honoured by inclusion since that year. The stated grounds were the survival of a thousand years of vine-growing tradition in unbroken form.

Tokaj has defended its name in court since the 19th century. The council's timeline records that phylloxera appeared in 1886 and destroyed 90 per cent of the vineyards within ten years, and that the same period saw the first international lawsuit in which Tokaj producers won protection of the Tokaj name before a court. The region's boundary was re-regulated in 1898, as the replanting proceeded.

A border moved through the vineyards in 1920. The council records that the Treaty of Trianon cut the settlements of Újhely, Szőlőske and Kistoronya, along with part of Sátoraljaújhely and its vineyards, away from the wine region. The council itself was founded eight years later, in 1928, with Károly Kurucz as its first president, and the technology of aszú production was defined more precisely by statute in 1936.

The name fight resumed as Hungary joined Europe. A bilateral EU-Hungary treaty in 1993 gave the Hungarian Tokaj name privilege over the Tocai and Tokay variety spellings used in Alsace and Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, under a moratorium running to 2007. In 2004 the wine law reserved aszú wine exclusively to the Tokaj region and changed the region's own name from Tokaj-Hegyalja wine region to Tokaj wine region; intergovernmental talks on the Slovak Tokaj question concluded the same year.

Tokaj's botrytis works differently from the northern model. Tokaj town explains that the local climate is warmer, so at the onset of botrytis the fruit is riper and at best overripe. The mould weaves through the berry flesh and transforms its aromatics without heavily destroying it or covering the skin. That is the technical reason the berries can be picked out of the bunch one at a time — the selection method the whole category depends on.

A puttony was a measure of volume before it was a measure of sweetness. Disznókő explains that the word puttonyos refers to the proportion of aszú berries to wine, indicating the concentration of sugars: berries were gathered in baskets called puttony holding 27 litres, and 3 to 6 of them were added to 136 litres of wine or must from the same vintage — 136 litres being the capacity of a Gönci cask.

The region's council states the same operation by weight: to the 136 litres of base wine in a Gönci cask, 3, 4, 5 or 6 puttony of aszú berries were added after the harvest, one puttony holding 24 kg of berries. Royal Tokaji converts the older scale directly — a 5 puttonyos wine required 110 to 120 kg of aszú berries for every 136 litres of fermenting must or base wine.

The 2013 vintage changed what the number certifies. Royal Tokaji records that the scale used to range from 3 to 6 puttonyos, but that since 2013 an aszú must meet minimum 19 per cent total alcohol, minimum 9 per cent actual alcohol and minimum 120 g/l sugar. The final classification of each wine now rests on independent technical analysis of sugar levels, and use of the word puttonyos is not compulsory.

The surviving numbers are sugar thresholds. Under the current rules a 5 puttonyos aszú indicates a minimum of 120 g of residual sugar per litre, 6 puttonyos a minimum of 150 g, and Essencia a minimum of 450 g. Tokaj town notes that concentration is no longer determined by the puttony at all, but that labels still publish it in that form out of respect for the tradition — a unit kept as vocabulary after losing its function.

Szamorodni is Polish for the way the bunch was found. The region's council glosses it as "born by itself": the bunches are picked as they are found on the vine, healthy and nobly rotten together, and processed together. If the sugar ferments out completely the wine is dry; if sugar remains after fermentation it is sweet szamorodni. Tokaj town records sweet versions typically retaining 100 to 120 grams of sugar or more.

Two further categories work the same material twice. Fordítás is made by pouring must or wine again over the pressed aszú paste, producing what the council calls a second aszú, less sweet than aszú itself. Máslás is made by pouring wine onto the lees left after the aszú has been racked off and letting it soak. The council's timeline dates the first mention of máslás to 1759 and the first appearance of the name fordítás to 1826.

Essencia sits outside the definition of wine. The council describes it as the nectar that drips from stored aszú berries under their own weight, with alcohol of 1.2 to 8.0 per cent by volume — low enough that it cannot be called wine in the classical sense. Tokaj town records that in the best years its sugar can reach 850 grams per litre. Aszú, szamorodni, fordítás, máslás and essencia are all internationally recognised Tokaj categories.

The damage is legible in two numbers. Tokaj town records that the number of vines per hectare fell while yields grew several times over, and that the lower quality of the resulting raw material was corrected by later technological intervention. Integration toward the Soviet market, with its low expectations and voracious absorption capacity, produced what the town calls a drastic decline in attitude and therefore in quality.

Some habits from those decades are still being unlearned. Tokaj town names prolonged cask ageing and darabban tartás — keeping casks deliberately part-filled — as harmful inheritances, because part-filling means coarse oxidation. Adding spirit to compensate has been prohibited by law since 1908. The town's conclusion is that there is no single correct route to aszú: small holdings, individual methods and skilled people are the recipe.

The region sits on a geological seam. The council explains that it formed at the edge of the Great Plain and the uplands along a fault line, with the two areas having shifted relative to each other, and that volcanic activity arose along that fault. The traces are still readable in the hill cones, the soil and the composition of the rock — the landform and the growing medium produced by one event.

Two chambers at two depths shaped the chemistry. The council records that the volcano's secondary magma chamber formed about 4 km down while the primary chamber lay at 20 km, and argues that eruption from the secondary chamber, through gasification and acidification, left the heavy deep trace elements behind while the rare ones reached the soil-forming bedrock. Former eruption points remain visible: Kopasz hill at Tokaj, Sátor hill at Sátoraljaújhely, and Szava hill nearby.

The region's main grape has no known parentage. The council states plainly that Furmint is today the region's principal variety and that its origin is not known, with no scientific evidence available on the question. What is known is why it won: good susceptibility to botrytis combined with acid retention. Royal Tokaji puts it at approximately 70 per cent of plantings, with very high levels of tartaric acid.

The second variety is planted by thirst, not by prestige. Hárslevelű takes its name from the shape of its leaf, which recalls a linden leaf, and accounts for approximately 25 per cent of plantings. It is less rot-prone than Furmint and therefore yields less aszú. Because the two have different water requirements, the council records that Furmint goes on the upper part of the hillside and Hárslevelű on the lower ground.

The remaining four are specialists. Yellow muscat is about 5 per cent of plantings and must be picked at 17 to 18 must degrees to show its best side, so picking it late carries great risk. Kabar is a hybrid of Bouvier and Hárslevelű whose thicker berry skin leaves finished aszú berries less vulnerable to later wet weather. Kövérszőlő, a traditional variety not now widely planted, can produce aszú berries three times the weight of Furmint's.

Three different numbers describe this region and they must not be swapped. The World Heritage core zone totals 132.555 square kilometres — 13,245 hectares — and matches the Tokaj-Hegyalja wine region as defined in Hungarian wine law; the buffer zone takes in the administrative areas of 27 further settlements. Separately, the regional tourism body counts around 5,500 hectares of vineyards across 27 towns and villages. Inscribed area, legal delimitation and planted vineyard are three measures.

Tokaji was once shelved with the medicines. The region's council records that the wine featured in the Hungarian pharmacopoeia as recently as 80 years ago, and its own timeline dates the listing as a medicine to the years 1920 to 1950. The council attributes the reputation to easily absorbed sugars, organic acids and a high potassium and magnesium content — a pharmacological reading of a dessert wine that outlasted most of its era's remedies.

The famous version is a legend, and Tokaj town labels it as one. In the widely known story, aszú was first made by Szepsi Laczkó Máté in 1650, when the preacher — fearing a Turkish incursion — delayed the harvest until 10 November. The grapes of the Oremus vineyard had already shrivelled heavily, and selecting the botrytised berries produced an extraordinary wine that reached the ruling prince's table.

The category had a different name for 250 years. Tokaj town credits Szikszai Fabricius Balázs, head of the Sárospatak Reformed college, with first writing down the word főbor around 1570, after which it remained the dominant name for the style for some two and a half centuries. Poles were its greatest enthusiasts, and they spread the name szamorodni in Hungary from the 1820s, displacing főbor within a few decades.

The proof came out of a bottle in 1997. Disznókő released its 1993 aszú that year and describes it as a fresher wine, so different from those produced during the communist period. Two years earlier, in 1995, the Tokaj Renaissance association of classified vineyards had been created — the first consortium in the post-communist area to regroup the best Tokaji producers to develop the region, its wines and their promotion.

Access to the new estates is uneven, and worth checking before travelling. The regional tourism body lists a winery tour and wine tasting at Tokaj Oremus in Tolcsva. Royal Tokaji publishes no visitor programme: its site gives office hours of Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 16:00, at 3909 Mád, Rákóczi utca 35. Disznókő publishes an open invitation to visit the estate and its terroir.

The vine may be native to the ground it grows on. The council records that a Miocene fossil grape-leaf imprint regarded as the common ancestor of today's varieties, Vitis tokaiensis, was found in this landscape, and that the wild ancestral vine Vitis sylvestris still grows wild in Tokaj-Hegyalja today. The barrels come from the same hills: sessile oak from the higher zones, known internationally as Zemplén oak, medium-hard and durable through its tannin.

One grape had to give a name back. Zéta was bred in 1951 by Ferenc Király and colleagues by crossing Bouvier with Furmint, and was registered among plantable varieties in 1990. It was formerly called Oremus — and the region holds a very famous Oremus vineyard, from which, the council writes, the first recorded aszú wine was probably harvested. The council's variety profile dates the rename to 1999; its own timeline dates it to 1997.

Specific cellars were named in the inscription. The council lists the Kőporosi and Gomboshegyi cellar rows at Hercegkút, the Ungvár cellar row, and the Oremus and wine-museum cellars at Tolcsva as becoming part of the World Heritage in the cultural landscape category in 2002. Sárospatak's Rákóczi cellar sits among the named sites too. The Tolcsva museum cellar runs 2 km on three levels, dug into rhyolite tuff and covered in mould.

The region's museum sits in a building with its own layered history. The World Heritage Wine Museum opened in 2015, in Hungary's only World Heritage wine region, occupying a former brewery of about 2,000 square metres built around 1790 for the Hungarian royal treasury. The building later passed to the Tokaj Jewish community, and in 1874 a Jewish school and a ritual bath were established in it. The museum also shows Austrian, German, Swiss, Italian, French and Portuguese growing areas.