Tokaj, Hungary – The Wine Region of Kings – Day 1

When I was first planning this trip I was focused on visiting Lake Balaton, a Hungarian tourist spot which has it’s own wine region associated with it.  My friend Tom who is joining us talked me into Tokaj, since it’s one of the worlds most famous wine regions, and we have been very happy with this decision!

The train ride from Vienna was a long one, as Tokaj is a rather remote area in north eastern Hungary (actually fairly close to Ukraine).  Our first stop was in Budapest, at the Keleti train station.  This is the main train station in Budapest, completed in 1884.  It has apparently been featured in a Mission Impossible movie, which I have yet to see.  The facade is impressive.

Two and half hours after departing Keleti, we arrived in Tokaj.

We are staying in nearby Tarcal, at the Andrassy Kuria Hotel, a short 10 minutes cab ride from Tokaj.  The place is a bargain, including both breakfast and dinner in the price of the hotel room.  It was interesting to note that we were the only Americans in the place.

The first morning, after breakfast, we met our guide for the next three days, Gergely (Greg) Somogyi, the local Tokaj expert, and I don’t think the word “expert” is quite strong enough!  He seemingly knows everything about the region, and has connections with all of the best wineries here.  If you decide to tour this region, his guidance is a MUST!!  Besides being the local expert, he’s also a super nice guy with a great sense of humor.  His website for tours is “Travel Tokaj with Tokaj Today”

Our first stop of the day was at Barta Pince in the little town of Mad.

It was here that Greg explained the Tokaj region in detail, discussing both the history of the region and the wine varietals currently being vinified.  While there are officially six grape varieties allowed in Tokaj, the predominant one is Furmint.  Before planning this trip, I had never even heard of it!  Turns out it’s quite nice, and very versatile.

The winemaker at  Barta is Vivien Ujvári, one of the ever growing trend of  female winemakers in the region.  While there are extensive cellars under their completely restored 17th century Baroque estate, she doesn’t like using the space for barrel aging due to all of the mold in the cellar.  This seemed to be a one-off, as every other cellar we visited was filled with barrels.

They do use the consistently cool cellar for bottle storage.  If only I had this under my house!

Greg (who works part time for Barta) opened 4 wines for us; a dry Furmint (from Magnum), a dry Furmint-Harslevelu blend (my favorite of this tasting), a sweet Szamorodni, and a sweet “6 Puttonyos” Aszu.  Tokaj is historically known for their sweet wines, and that was really all they made until fairly recently, with wine customer trends moving towards dry wines.  Today about 85% of Tokaj wines are dry, which is a remarkable change from their past.

Quick background on the sweet wines; both are produced by “botrytis”, known historically as “noble rot”, since the rot produced these very popular sweet wines which were enjoyed by royalty and the very wealthy. For those not into wine, yes, the grapes are actually rotting, but this is a good thing!  Greg explained that hundreds of years ago, people would go for long periods of time without tasting anything sweet, as sugar was impossible to come by, so these wines were treasured.

The Szamorodni wines are made from whole clusters picked from the vine, while the Aszu wines are made by picking individual berries from the clusters that have just the right amount of botrytis.  The Aszu wines are therefore much more concentrated and generally sweeter, while also requiring a lot more labor to produce, therefore being about twice as expensive.  The sweetness from these wines is offset by acidity, so they aren’t cloyingly sweet.

Lastly, the Aszu wines are classified by “puttonyos”.  A puttonyos was the basket the pickers would carry on their back, and the more puttonyos that were added to a set amount of wine, the sweeter that wine would be.  They historically ranked the wine in order, from 1 puttonyos to 6.  They have since dropped the production of 1 through 4 puttonyos, and only make 5 and 6.  Yeah, it gets confusing, but suffice it to say that 6 puttonyos has more residual sugar than 5 puttonyos.  Ok, enough geeky wine stuff!

Our next stop was the spectacular, stupendous, incredible Sauska Winery!  The owner, a Hungarian-American, made his money in the United States with industrial lighting, and has spent a good amount of it on this winery!  The exterior looks like a building from a science fiction movie!

We were immediately greeted by the friendly staff with a glass of sparkling wine.  The versatile Furmint variety makes excellent sparkling!  It seems nearly every winemaker in Tokaj is making a sparkling now, many of them surprisingly quite good!

The winery is brand spanking new, and has not yet had their grand opening, which is slated for this summer.  This is a view of the deck of their restaurant.

Below is the view from the deck of their bar area.  Amazing views of the Tokaj hills towards the southeast!

This made for a perfect spot for a group photo!

The winery is as advanced and beautiful as you can get!

This barrel room, complete with concrete eggs in the middle, looks like something out of HBO’s Westworld!  Simply stunning!  I’d hate to be in charge of cleaning all of the glass in this place!

We had signed up for their Premium Tasting (which included an excellent lunch), and we were the first group the winery had hosted for this tasting…I told you this place was new!  The wines poured are apparently the owners favorites, and they had set up power-point slides describing each wine we were tasting.  The place is just gorgeous…the staff advised us that every piece of furniture in the place was custom made, and it was obvious.  What it must be like to have that kind of money…only to potentially lose it all in the wine business!  I kid, I kid!

Here is the final lineup of wines we tasted through.  My favorite wine was the Late Harvest Cuvee, which is just another name for the Szamorodni wine.  Some of the wineries prefer to use the term “Late Harvest” as it’s easier for most of the world to know what it is, which is quite understandable based on my knowledge before we visited here.  I picked up two bottles of this wine so we can open them in Budapest when our friends the Potts arrive.

Our last stop of the day was at Tokaj Nobilis, with one of the leading female wine makers in Tokaj, Sarolta Bardos.

We tasted through 6 wines, including a sparking that was very good.  She was one of the first to make a sparkling wine in Tokaj back in 2015.  Our lineup of wines is below.

This Aszu was my favorite of the tasting, so we bought one to have with dinner that night.  I love these wines!

Coming up next, two more days of wine tastings and history in the Tokaj district.  I don’t want to make this post any longer, and we are on the train and nearing Budapest.  Thanks for reading!