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Two rare bottles of 1889 Tokaji Essencia to be offered at auction!
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Two bottles of incredibly rare 1889 Tokaji Essencia, Lipót Zimmerman from Hungary’s most renowned wine region Tokaj and from the most famous family to produce it, will be offered in Dreweatts Fine and Rare Wine and Spirits sale on July 8, 2021.
The Tokaji Blend is a term used to describe the varietal composition of the revered wines of Tokaj, Hungary and the area and vineyard, which have an impassioned history, centred around the first winemakers of the region, the Jewish Zimmerman family.
The Zimmermann family were wealthy Jewish landowners, creating the region’s legendary sweet wine from first-growth vineyards from the 19th century until World War II. They had
numerous vineyards across Tokaj and approximately 60 cellars and lived in an elegant townhouse in Mád,
as well as having a second residence in Abaújszántó. Highly successful, their wines were prized, receiving several gold medals at competitions in Berlin in 1892 and Paris in 1896.
The company continued to flourish with offices in Budapest, Berlin, Katowice, London and New York, until the occupation of Hungary by Germany in 1944. It was then under General Dome Sztojay and SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann that 437,402 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz, amongst them the Zimmerman family, in an attempt to eradicate the last intact Jewish community in occupied Europe. The vineyards were left to fall into disrepair and eventually taken over by the communist state when Hungary fell to the Red Army in 1945 and communism ruled until the 1980s.
It was in 1990 following the fall of communism, that the first foreign investor in the region purchased the land and vineyards.
British wine writer Hugh Johnson acquired it from more than 60 individuals,
who had bought it when it was privatized some years before. In doing so, he founded the winery known as Royal Tokaji, which has established itself as one of Hungary’s most foremost wineries. The region of Tokaj was also designated a world heritage site in 2002.
In June 2016, six descendants of the Zimmerman family’s holocaust survivors unveiled two plaques at the front of the headquarters of the Royal Tokaji wineries in Hungary, recognizing the family’s unequivocal link to the history of winemaking in the region and in tribute to the Jewish community there that lost their lives.