A wine to insure that a groom would have a male heir was one of the medicinal beliefs about Tokay wines.  A glass of it was to be consumed the evening of the nuptials.  Another tradition was that doctors would prescribe this famous wine to dying patients, because it would invigorate them to live longer.  Two great reasons to always stock this wine in your cellar, and for years, no cellar was considered complete without a couple of bottles of Tokay.

This is probably the famous and noted wine from Hungary and comes from the village and surrounding area of Tokay (Tokaj) at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.  They plant the Furmint grape there in a very volcanic soil, which lends a taste of the earth (terroir, as the French say).  They allow the some of the grapes to stay on the vine to achieve the Noble Rot, a process that is also found in the great dessert wines of France and Germany.  It is the bundling of these super sweet grapes that account for sweetness of Tokay.  These bundles of the sweetest grapes are put into containers called “puttonos” and they are added to the regular wine from the basic harvested grapes.

One can buy basic Tokay wine called Szamorodi, or they can buy Tokaji Aszu with the designated Puttonos from one to five.  Aszu is Hungarian for sweet.  I guess that you can liken the numbering system to Germany’s Auslese, Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese and Eiswein.  There is lore, and it probably was so, years ago that there was also a Tokaji Essence that was made entirely of “puttonos” grapes.  It is legendary, though I have never talked to anyone that has or had a bottle of it.  Perhaps after the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this was lost to Hungary as well as their nobility class.

As one would imagine, the bottles are smaller, sixteen ounces, and a very unique shape, and have a higher alcohol count.  One or two glasses per person after a feast will be more than adequate for everyone.  The wines that I have had are of a pretty golden color, with a nose of sugar or honey for a lack of a better description, but with the underlying taste of the soil that differentiates it from the other great dessert wines.  I have always been on the lookout for the one and two “puttonos” designations.  I have only found the three, four and five.  I will continue to look though.