Tokaji Szamorodni Száraz 1996

This Tokaji Szamorodni Száraz comes from the Tokaj vineyard, in north-eastern Hungary, a historic appellation listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The vines rise in tiers on the foothills of the Zemplén Mountains, on volcanic soils, at the confluence of the Bodrog and the Tisza. The autumn mists rising from these rivers encourage the development of noble rot. Under the Château de Sárospatak brand, named after the historic town in the north of the appellation, this collector's cuvée expresses the dry, little-known side of the great wines of Tokaj.

Szamorodni means "as it was born": the Furmint and Hárslevelű bunches are harvested whole, with whatever share of botrytised berries they naturally carry, without sorting out the aszú berries. After fermentation, the wine was aged for three years in casks, without topping up, in the manner of the vins jaunes of the Jura. This slow oxidative ageing shapes a singular style of great tension, designed to span the decades and gain complexity over time.

This wine reveals notes of fresh walnut, toasted almond, hazelnut, dried apricot, quince, toast, smoke, curry and orange peel. The golden-yellow colour with green glints heralds a highly distinctive nose, between dried fruit and empyreumatic notes. The palate is powerful and vigorous, with lovely freshness, and a long, saline finish that calls for food.

It was the Romans who planted the first vines, at a time when the country was part of a region called Pannonia. At the dawn of the 18th century, Hungary, united with Austria, exported its most famous wine throughout Europe: Tokaj (made from the Furmint grape variety). As everywhere in Europe, winegrowing was destroyed by phylloxera in the 19th century. During the communist period, vineyards were run as cooperatives, which guaranteed winemakers a stable income. Quite a few small growers could not keep up with this expanding economy, so Hungary's vineyards were restructured, losing 30% of their area in the process. Today many family estates have made their mark, some of them producing wines of incredible quality. As elsewhere in Europe, winegrowing is declining under the European restructuring plan for the wine industry. Hungary, which lies at the same latitude as Burgundy, has a continental climate with hot summers and cold winters. Rainfall is sufficient for non-irrigated viticulture, and the soils are varied and of high quality depending on the region. With around a hundred native and international grape varieties, the country enjoys good varietal diversity. The Furmint and Hárslevelű of the Tokaj region, made as dry wines and the source of Tokaj's great sweet wines, are undoubtedly the best-known varieties today. The most widely planted grape variety is Olaszrizling for whites and Kékfrankos for reds. International grape varieties, mainly Bordeaux varieties, flourish particularly in the south of the country, where they produce wines of great class.