A Teachable Moment

„Every time I hear someone say that they don't like sweet wines or dessert wines, I want to sit them down and have them try just one sip—a mere single sip—of a good Tokaji Aszú.

This fabled Hungarian wine from the Tokaj district about 150 miles northeast of Budapest is composed mostly of the indigenous grape Furmint, along with varying amounts of another local white grape, Hárslevelű. Modern, post-communism Tokaji is one of the fine-wine wonders of the world. It has seen an acceleration of quality that probably no other ancient wine resurrection can rival, so debased was it.

This descent into banal mediocrity was the more striking for the fact that Tokaji once was the most highly regarded—and fabulously priced—wine in the world. But it plummeted into the wine version of despair, its producers reduced to cranking out industrial quantities of bulk sweet swill for Soviet consumption. No more. Today, Tokaji Aszú shines with distinction. It's been modernized in the best sense. And its flavor is like no other: sweet yet briskly acidic and not at all heavy.

A historical note: The residual sweetness of Tokaji Aszú traditionally has been expressed by the number of puttonyos (literally, buckets or hods) of botrytized grapes added to the base wine. The more puttonyos, the higher the proportion of botrytized berries and the more pronounced the cinnamon spiciness of the botrytis taste and scent.”