You must try the special royal Hungaricum: Tokaj!

 In his article in The Article Giles Macdonogh, recalls his experience at Tokaj hill, meeting Hugh Johnson, the owner of Royal Tokaj and enjoying the fantastic wine which is also a hungaricum. He shares personal experiences and talks about the history of Tokaj, some of which I have highlighted here.

 We know Tokaji chiefly as a luscious sweet Hungarian wine created by adding “puttony” or 27-litre hods of super-sweet, shrivelled, nobly rotten fruit (pictured) to a 136-litre barrel of base wine called a “gönci” cask. This is “Aszú”, once the standard tipple of central European emperors, kings and princes when such people still roamed the earth. Aszú is made in appreciable quantities every four or five years or so, and in the vintages in between drinkers have to make do with late harvest wines, “Szamorodni” (which can be sweet or dry) or dry Tokaji.

It is not surprising that many of the best dry (and sweet) Tokajis come from the “crus” or growths that were classified in the eighteenth century, like Szent Tamás, Betsek, Mezes Maly or Király. Istvan Szepsy was the Tokaji grower who took the wine out of the darkness of the Communist years and introduced the new era to the region. His wines have been consistently great. His best dry wines come from Urágya and Szent Tamás.