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Furmint and Tokaj - from dry to Aszu

Tokaj is one of the most famous and oldest wine regions in the world, and its heart is the Furmint grape. Although most people associate Tokaj exclusively with sweet, golden Aszu, the truth is far richer: Furmint today makes a whole spectrum of wines, from bone-dry to some of the sweetest and most expensive nectars on earth. They are linked by one thing - high acidity, which binds every style together. In this post you will get to know Furmint and Tokaj from the inside: why acidity is key here, how noble rot works, what the puttonyos scale means and how Aszu differs from Szamorodni and the legendary Eszencia. It is a journey through one of the most fascinating regions of wine.

Furmint - the soul of Tokaj

Furmint is decidedly the most important grape of Tokaj, making up around sixty percent of the region’s plantings and being the basis of the famous Aszu wines. It is a white variety of late ripening and high acidity, perfectly adapted to the local terroir. Furmint has a remarkable susceptibility to noble rot, which makes it the ideal raw material for sweet wines, but at the same time it gives excellent dry wines. Alongside it, other grapes are grown in Tokaj, like Harslevelu or Sarga Muskotaly, but it is Furmint that gives the region its character. Its versatility is the key to understanding Tokaj: one grape can give wines of extremely different levels of sweetness, yet always with a recognisable, lively acidity and a mineral, sometimes smoky background.

High acidity as the foundation

The secret of Furmint and the whole of Tokaj is high acidity, which forms the structural foundation of every style. It is acidity that makes dry Furmints fresh, taut and mineral, and means sweet Aszu wines are not cloying or heavy, but keep balance and drinkability despite their enormous sugar content. Without this acidity the sweetest wines of Tokaj would be overwhelmingly sticky; thanks to it they remain elegant and refreshing. Acidity acts like a backbone that keeps the wine upright regardless of the level of sweetness. It is precisely the tension between sugar and acid that makes the sweet Tokajis so exceptional and capable of long aging. Understanding the role of acidity is the key to appreciating why Furmint copes so well at both extremes, from dry wines to dessert nectars.

Dry Furmint - a new face

Although Tokaj is famous for sweetness, one of the most interesting contemporary trends is the return to dry wines. Dry Tokaji Furmint is a full-bodied wine of vivid character, with notes of quince, apple, honey, smoke, chamomile and a saline, mineral note, usually at an alcohol content on the order of twelve to fourteen percent. These are serious wines, often compared to the best white Burgundies or dry Rieslings in terms of potential. For many drinkers it is a discovery: a Tokaj that is not sweet, but taut, fresh and gastronomic. Dry Furmint shows another face of the grape and the region, proving that its potential reaches far beyond dessert wines. It is today one of the most exciting directions of Tokaj’s development and a great point of entry for someone who wants to discover Furmint.

Noble rot

The sweet wines of Tokaj owe their character to noble rot, that is, the fungus Botrytis cinerea. When the right conditions prevail in autumn, humid mornings and dry, sunny afternoons, the rot attacks the ripe grapes, but instead of spoiling them, concentrates them. Botrytis pierces the skin of the fruit and causes the water to evaporate, so that the sugar, acids and aromas become concentrated. Thus form the so-called aszu berries: shrivelled, concentrated fruit of enormous sweetness and depth. It is a capricious and risky process, dependent on the weather, but it gives a raw material of unrepeatable character. Noble rot also adds to the wines characteristic aromas of honey, dried apricots, orange peel and saffron. Without botrytis there would be no Aszu. We write more about this phenomenon in our post on noble rot.

Aszu and the puttonyos scale

Tokaji Aszu is the flagship sweet wine of the region, measured on the characteristic puttonyos scale. Traditionally, baskets, that is puttony, full of shrivelled aszu berries affected by botrytis, were added to a cask of base must or wine. The more baskets added, the sweeter the wine. Hence the scale from three to six puttonyos, where a higher number means a greater concentration of sugar. In the past the number of puttonyos corresponded literally to the number of baskets per cask, today it is based on the content of residual sugar and extract in the finished wine. Above six puttonyos there is an even higher category, Aszu-Eszencia. The puttonyos scale is a practical guide to sweetness: the higher the number, the more dessert-like and concentrated the wine. Thanks to it you can consciously choose an Aszu matched to the occasion and your own preferences.

Szamorodni

Alongside Aszu, Tokaj offers the Szamorodni style, whose name means roughly as it grew. The difference from Aszu lies in the way of harvesting: Szamorodni is made from whole bunches of grapes, without the labour-intensive, manual selection of individual aszu berries. Depending on the year and the proportion of botrytis-affected fruit in the bunch, Szamorodni can be sweet or dry. The sweet version, in Hungarian edes, usually contains a fair amount of residual sugar, while the dry version, szaraz, is sometimes aged under a film of yeast, giving a style reminiscent of sherry. Szamorodni is a kind of democratic cousin of Aszu: less labour-intensive, often more affordable, and at the same time offering an authentic taste of Tokaj. It is a good way to discover the region without reaching straight away for the most expensive Aszu.

Eszencia - the nectar of kings

At the top of the Tokaj pyramid stands Eszencia, also called nectar, one of the most exclusive wines in the world. It is literally the juice that flows out of the aszu berries by itself under the weight of their own mass, before they are even pressed. This slowly running nectar has such an enormous concentration of sugar that the yeast can barely ferment it, and the alcohol level rarely exceeds five to six percent. For this reason Eszencia is so thick and sweet that it technically barely qualifies as a wine. Very little of it is made, it ages for years, and prices reach dizzying levels. Eszencia is the essence of Tokaj in its purest form: concentrated sweetness held in balance by incredible acidity. It is a legendary wine, tasted with a spoon rather than a glass, treated like a liquid jewel.

The spectrum of Tokaj styles

Let us gather the main styles of the region in one place, from the driest to the sweetest:

The table shows how one region and mainly one grape give a whole spectrum of wines. It is a rare versatility, always based on the same high acidity.

History: the wine of kings

Tokaj has one of the most dignified histories in the world of wine. Its sweet wines were favourites of European courts and were called the wine of kings and the king of wines, and legend attributes this admiration among others to the French monarch. What is more, Tokaj was one of the first regions in the world to introduce a classification of vineyards, long before the famous classifications of Bordeaux. For centuries these wines were considered a luxury reserved for the aristocracy and crowned heads. This history is not just a curiosity, but part of the region’s identity and a source of its prestige. By drinking Tokaj, you reach for a wine with a lineage going back centuries, which shaped the tastes of European elites. This heritage makes discovering Tokaj an even more fascinating experience.

How to drink it and what to pair

The styles of Tokaj call for different approaches at the table. Dry Furmint is a versatile gastronomic wine, great with fish, poultry, mushroom dishes or aged cheeses, where its acidity and minerality shine. Sweet Aszu is a classic with desserts, but the real masterstroke is pairing it with blue cheeses, like roquefort, where the sweetness contrasts with the saltiness. Aszu also suits dishes of foie gras and desserts based on apricot or honey. Serve sweet Tokajis well chilled, so the acidity enlivens the sweetness. Treat Eszencia like a rare delicacy, sipped slowly. Thanks to high acidity and sugar, the sweet wines of Tokaj have enormous aging potential, able to mature over decades, even centuries, gaining in complexity.

The key points in a nutshell

Furmint is the soul of Tokaj, a grape of high acidity and late ripening, making up the majority of the region’s plantings. Its versatility gives a whole spectrum of wines: from bone-dry Furmints with notes of quince and smoke, through Szamorodni from whole bunches, to the famous sweet Aszu measured on the puttonyos scale from three to six, all the way to the legendary Eszencia, a nectar of such great sugar concentration that it barely ferments. Everything is bound together by high acidity, the foundation of balance and aging potential. The sweetness of Aszu owes itself to noble rot, botrytis. Want to discover the styles of Tokaj and record your own impressions? Keep notes in the GustoNote app. See also our posts on noble rot and Riesling.