The Cradle of
Liquid Gold
A brief overview and the history of the world's first classified wine region, the home of the famous aszú wine, Tokaj. Wines made here are the culmination of excellence, tradition, heritage, beauty and complexity, made from grapes cultivated on 14 million-year-old volcanic terroirs, transformed into wine with more than 500 year-old procedures, aged in cellars built in the 13th century. Prepare for a travel in time and mouthwatering sensations!
If you'd like to explore the wine region, we warmly recommend the Tokaj Guide, edited by Tokaj Magic. The book contains detailed information about the region's history, wineries, accommodations, and wines.
Tokaj-hegyalja
Hungary is located in the center of Europe, a country with a long history in winemaking. Hungary has several wine regions, the most well known being Tokaj, that has produced the favourite wine of royal families, emperors, queens, reknown artists, wine lovers for many centuries. The unique bouqet and aromas of Tokaji wines are world famous, the best ones with aging potential of several centuries.
Mirracle of Tokaj
- Noble rot -
Tokaj’s unique wines were born thanks to a special phenomenon called the Noble Rot which is caused by a fungal disease called Botrytis Cinerea. Botrytis can completely destroy the grapes if they are infected prior to getting ripe, however if it develops once the berries are already mature it will shrivel the grapes turning them into exceptionally flavorful “Aszu” berries, as they are called in Tokaj.
With noble rot liquid content of the berries reduces while they encapsulate intense level of sugar, acidity, a high concentration of minerals and aromatic flavors.
The region’s microclimate is perfect for Botrytis to develop in late Autumn when the berries are already ripe. Fog develops in the mornings from the two rivers, Bodrog and Tisza, which are joining together in Tokaj, while the sunny afternoons on the slope of the hills help the berries to become dry, sweet and extremely tasty
Beginnings
Based on historical evidence, grape cultivation in the Tokaj wine region began as early as the 3rd century during the Roman Empire.
According to legend, around the 9th century when the Hungarians, led by Álmos and his son Árpád, reached this area, grape cultivation was already flourishing. Árpád's brave knight, Turzol, was the first to climb one of the region's peaks, and upon his return, he reported to his lord that the hillside was covered with peaceful vineyards. Later, Árpád granted Turzol not only the mountain but the entire area up to the confluence of the Bodrog and Tisza rivers. The village of Turzol (now Tarcal) was established in this area.
A document discovered from the 11th century also mentions one of the wine cellars in Tarcal, stating that it belonged to the Hungarian royal court. This further demonstrates that the art of winemaking has been continuously practiced in the region for over a thousand years since the settlement of the Hungarians.
The construction of Tokaj's famous and extensive underground cellar systems began in several towns as early as the 13th century, as supported by historical documents. These records mention the locations of the cellars and even name some of the best vineyards, many of which are still cultivated today.
Golden Age
In the 1500s, Polish merchants recognized the potential of Tokaj and began exporting the region's high-quality wines. In 1561, a decree was issued that officially regulated viticulture in the area. A document from ten years later is the first to mention Tokaj's most famous wine variety, aszú, in writing.
The region thrived over the following centuries, with Tokaji wine becoming a favorite among European royal courts, including those of France, Austria, and Russia. For more than 270 years, Tokaji wine was the most expensive in the world.
In 1703, Francis II Rákóczi, Prince of Transylvania, gifted some Tokaji wine from his estate to Louis XIV. The French king famously remarked: "C’est le roi des vins, et le vin des rois," meaning "It is the king of wines, and the wine of kings."
The first
Aszú wine
Legend has it that the first Aszú wine was invented by Máté Szepsi Laczkó, a calvinist pastor and the vineyard master of a major landowner in the Tokaj region in the 17th century. When the Turkish invasion was imminent he decided to postpone the harvest on the Lórántffy family’s extensive vineyards. By the time they got around to the harvest, the grapes on the hills of Oremus had turned into shriveled botrytized berries that looked like raisins. The winemakers decided to try and use them, and the first Tokaji aszú was made. The first bottle was served for Easter to the landowner, Zsuzsanna Lórántffy who was the wife of Prince György Rákóczi I.
Based on this story the invention of aszú wine is attributed to Szepsi, and it is said that this had happened around 1620. There are however evidences that Aszú wine was known almost 50 years earlier. An inheritance letter of a noble man, called Máté Garai, dated 1571 mentions several barrels of Aszú wines proving that the wine type had existed well before 1620.
World’s first classified Wine region
Tokaj’s magic does not only derive from the region’s microclimate that lets the noble rot flourish, but also from its unique wine making process that has been controlled for almost five hundred years. In 1561 „Regulamentum Culturae Vinearum” was issued to regulate the viticulture in the region.
Tokaji wine became the subject of the world's first appellation control, established several decades before Port wine. Vineyard classification began in 1720, over 135 years before the classification of Bordeaux in France, with vineyards being classified depending on the soil, sun exposure and potential to develop noble rot.
The region’s best vineyards had been owned by royal and noble families for several centuries. A royal decree in 1757 established a closed production district in Tokaj.
The terroir
The Tokaj region has 5,500 acres of vineyards across 27 towns and villages. Although the region is best known for its sweet aszú wines, more than half of the wine produced here is dry.
The vulcanic activity that had taken place 14 millions years ago resulted in the presence of a wide variety of rhyolite, tuff, and zeolite in the land. The volcanic bedrocks, that are mostly covered with soils of weathered tuffs and loess make the region's wines truly unique and extremely flavorful. Grapes grown even in the same vineyard can have different characters with the changing structure of the underlying soil layers.
Altough Tokaj is not the only region where grapes with noble rot are cutlivated (on a sidenote there are not many in the world) but it is the only region with such diverse terroirs which, combined with the region's centuries-old winemaking procedures, make the wine of Tokaj the King of Wine.
Photo: winesofhungary.hu
Vinum Regum, Rex Vinorum
Tokaji wines have been the favourite wines of royal families, emperors, queens, reknown artists, wine lovers for many centuries.
In 1703, Francis Rákóczi II, Prince of Transylvania, gave Louis XIV some Tokaji wine from his Tokaj estate as a gift. The French king said “C’est le roi des vins, et le vin des rois”, „It is the King of Wines and the Wine of Kings“. In reference to this, you will find most Tokaji wines labelled with the latin translation of this sentence: „Vinum Regum, Rex Vinorum.”
Emperor Franz Josef, the Austrian King of Hungary, had a tradition of sending Queen Victoria Tokaji Aszú wine, as a gift, every year on her birthday, one bottle for every month she had lived, twelve for each year. On her eighty-first and final birthday in 1900, this totaled an impressive 972 bottles.
Tokaji wine has received accolades from numerous great writers and composers including Beethoven, Liszt, Schubert, Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich von Schiller, Bram Stoker, Johann Strauss II, Voltaire and Haydn.
Besides Louis XIV, several other European monarchs are known to have been keen consumers of the wine, such as Louis XV, Frederick the Great, Napoleon III, Gustav III. In Russia, consumers included Peter the Great and Empress Elizabeth of Russia.
Decline
and Revival
The partition of Poland in 1795 and the subsequent imposition of customs duties dealt a severe blow to the export of Tokaji wines and precipitated the economic recession of the region. However, this was only the first step in the decline of the wine region.
At the end of the 19th century, the phylloxera epidemic sweeping through Europe unfortunately did not spare Tokaj either; this ruthless vine disease destroyed more than 90% of the vineyards. After the epidemic, vineyards across Europe were rehabilitated with rootstocks brought back from America (nota bene: one of the founding fathers of American winemaking was a former nobleman who emigrated from Hungary, Ágoston Haraszthy, who brought more than 350 different grape varieties from Europe to America in the 1860s). After phylloxera, the next blow came in 1920. Due to the Treaty of Trianon, the areas of Hegyalja east of Sátoraljaújhely, including the three villages of Kistornya, Újhely, and Szőlőske, were ceded to Czechoslovakia.
The Soviet rule after World War II, just as it affected the country's economy, did not spare the Tokaji wine region either. Production became centralized, and the focus shifted from quality to quantity. From the 1990s the political transition eventually allowed Hegyalja's wineries to flourish again. Alongside the excellent quality classic Tokaji varieties, fresh dry and sparkling wines also appeared.
Tokaj's wonderful wines must regain their prominence both in Hungary and on the international stage.
