Disznókő

Few sweet-wine regions let you walk the whole production chain in ninety minutes. Every tasting option here includes a guided tour of the vineyards, the winery and the cellars before the glasses come out, and the cellar itself is the point: this is where Eszencia — free-run juice pressed by the berries' own weight, at 600 to 900 grams of sugar per litre — is collected drop by drop.

Expect a tour and a tasting sold as one product, lasting one to one and a half hours, with named flights: a classic flight, an Eszencia tasting, a vertical Aszú tasting, or a custom selection. The tasting pours Furmint and its blending partners. The winery building dates from 1995 and was designed by the prize-winning architect Dezső Ekler; the tasting happens ten metres below ground, in a cellar cut into hard rhyolite.

The published season runs May to October, with the longest hours from June through September. Outside that window the estate states plainly that a visit might be possible if booked in advance, so nothing is guaranteed in winter. Autumn brings the Aszú selection, when pickers are working berry by berry — the most interesting time to watch, and the busiest for the cellar staff.

Book by email or phone — there is no online booking calendar. The estate welcomes individuals and groups up to 50 people and asks larger groups to book in advance; tours, tastings and estate visits go through a named contact, Mr Csaba Gál. The boutique opens daily 10:00–19:00 from 1 June to 30 September and 10:00–18:00 in May and October. Published tasting prices are 4,500 Ft and 8,000 Ft per person.

The estate is at Mezőzombor, on the western edge of the Tokaj region, with its vineyards in a single block around the winery. The property also holds the Sárga Borház restaurant, a 19th-century former press house built in Greek Revival style by a former prime minister of Hungary. Arrive by car: this is a rural municipality and the estate road serves the winery itself.

Disznókő is a Tokaj estate at Mezőzombor in north-east Hungary, named after a vineyard first recorded in 1413. In its modern form it dates from 1992, when AXA Millésimes acquired the property and grouped a series of historically contiguous vineyards around the winery. The estate farms 107 hectares of vines set in around 150 hectares — one unbroken tract, which is unusual in Tokaj.

The estate sits inside one of Europe's oldest regulated wine landscapes. UNESCO records that in 1737 the decree of Emperor Charles VI — Charles III as king of Hungary — established the area as a closed wine region. Disznókő's own chronology states the same year for the delimitation, and records its vineyard name from 1413, three centuries earlier.

The ground is volcanic and the slope is abrupt. Soils are mostly clay settled on rhyolite and rhyolite tuff, a mineral-rich volcanic rock, and the vineyards run from 135 to 220 metres above sea level, rising sharply from the plain below. The south-facing sites follow one after another across the hillside: Illésházy, Kapi, Lajos and Hangács, with Dorgó on a separate aspect.

Two numbers explain why Aszú costs what it costs. The estate calls its Aszú harvest possibly the most labour-intensive in the world: harvesters pick individual botrytised berries and manage a mere 6 to 10 kilos a day. And its rarest bottling, the single-vineyard Kapi 6 puttonyos, has been released in only three vintages to date — 1999, 2005 and 2011.