Mád Idea: Royal Tokaji 1990-2013

BY NEAL MARTIN&nbsp;| JULY 03, 2019

You might
assume that the oldest bottle of wine I have ever tasted is the 1760 Terrantez included
in my <a target="_blank" href="https://www.vinous.com/articles/hurdling-over-time-19th-century-madeira-feb-2019">Madeira report</a> in early 2019. You would be wrong. The oldest bottle, or
more accurately bottles, that I have
tasted were even more ancient, and they were not Madeira but Tokaji. You can
read all about them at the end of this article, which also travels back in
time, though not three centuries but three decades, to the dawn of the modern
age for Tokaji and the inception of the Royal Tokaji Wine Company. Hugh Johnson’s
involvement gave the resurrection impetus and a globally renowned figurehead,
and meeting him again at this tasting, I could see that his unbridled enthusiasm
remains undiminished. Along with general manager Zotlán Kovács, who transferred
from the Disznoko in January 2017, Johnson and I examined the first vintages
from the 1990s that are being re-released, as well as the latest release, at
Farr Vintners’ offices in London.

I have transcribed
Johnson’s commentary and blended in extracts from an interview that I conducted
in 2005, when he offered personal insights into the challenges faced by an
Englishman entering a country in the throes of crumbling communist rule.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1562175086446-hugh+johnson+pic.jpg"> Zotlán Kovács and Hugh Johnson. 

A Mád Idea

“My
Tokaji experience began in 1970,” Johnson explained in his unmistakable
scholarly tone. “I was aware that one of the world’s greatest wines was stuck
behind the Iron Curtain. I always had in mind to do something about it, and the
opportunity arose in 1989, when communism was on the skids and the Hungarian prime
minister opened the border. I could see that everything was changing. Together
with friends that included Danish bankers and Hans Vinding Diers, we went to [the
town of] Mád because all the dealers were there. It was a business town with a
large Jewish community and wonderful vineyards. We were tipped off that good
wines were being made by individual growers, but when I first started going, it
was very undeveloped. It is impossible to exaggerate the deprivation. I
wondered where I was going to sleep and eat and used to say that Budapest was
lit by one 40-watt bulb.”

“We
decided on the name Royal Tokaji. We thought it was catchy, and it referred
back to the royal history, rather than Imperial Tokaji, which refers back to
the Habsburgs. The pride of Hungary is tied up with the royal house rather than
the emperor. I went round growers asking for samples but there were no bottles,
so we went to bars and used empty Coke bottles. We avoided the state-owned cooperatives,
which just produced brown fluid that was bottled in other cities. The shining
light was a few growers who made a handful of barrels for themselves, and these
barrels were hidden almost literally under the stairs. So we dug in and asked
the farmers in Mád if they would help us and contribute towards a collaborative
brand. Samuel Tinon was working in Entre-Deux-Mers when Vinding Diers invited
him to supervise the first harvest in 1990. We did not have a winery, the press
was in the open air and we had to rent cellar space. We also had to refuse a
lot of trailers that contained poor fruit.”

“Each new
vintage we learned something from the last. We discovered that it was far from
straightforward, and we had to work out for ourselves how to create the wine we
wanted. There were conflicting reports about that age-old argument of old-style
or new-style Tokaji. Our goal was to pursue the style of Tokaji that I fell in
love with. Personally, I thought that Aszú was Tokaji’s greatest wine and
rather ignored the rest, so initially our company decided to make Aszú only.
Since then we have back-pedaled, and we make non-Aszú wines in poorer years.
You are not guaranteed Aszú grapes every year and they are a huge amount of
trouble to make. They are not everyday wines.”

Vineyards

The
Royal Tokaji Company is known for its pioneering use of vineyard sites, so here
is a brief summary of those included in this report.Betsek is a 16-hectare vineyard
southeast of Mád, the vines located on black volcanic topsoil. The Royal Tokaji website states that Betsek has been served to Putin,
although no tasting notes have been forthcoming from the Russian president. It
tends to contain more Hárslevelű than other vineyards and is slightly spicier
in style.

The Birsalmás vineyard, which
means “quince” in Hungarian, lies just outside Mád on a southeast-facing
incline. It is just 0.5 hectares in size and produces only around 1,800
bottles.&nbsp;Johnson himself described the Mézes Mály vineyard when he launched
the 1993 a few years ago. “Mézes Mály is an unusual vineyard. It is a name that
has cropped up again and again throughout history, since 1571. It is an outcrop,
a peculiar piece of vineyard on the northern outskirts of Tarcal at a lower
elevation than most, isolated from the other great growths and with a different
soil. Most have stony clay called nurok
that produces late-ripening, high-acid wines. However, on the lower slopes you
have more or less stone-free loess, which dries out, so you don’t really want a
vintage like 2000. In the average vintage, you get a wine with a certain
perfume, although it may not be the longest-lasting wine. The 1993 was our
first vintage and the first time the name had appeared on a label for maybe a
century. One of things about loess soil is that it is wonderful for Muscat
d’Alexandria, so we have a higher proportion than anybody else, perhaps 15%,
and we are planting more.”&nbsp;Nyulászó is an 18-hectare
vineyard located east of Mád, adjacent to the Szt. Tamás vineyard. The literal
translation of its name is “to catch hares.” The vineyard is marked by red
volcanic topsoil that engenders lively wines.&nbsp;Szt. Tamás comprises 12 hectares of vine orientated south, southwest and southeast
within the commune of Mád. It is planted entirely with Furmint. <img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1562175173662-royal_tokaji_betsek_vineyard.jpg"> The Betsek vineyard where the&nbsp;vines are located on black volcanic topsoil.

Winemaking

“The
river itself does not make a great deal of difference to the atmosphere. It’s a
wide river, and it’s the flood plain that creates the atmospheric conditions
for botrytis. At Royal Tokaji the harvest traditionally starts on October 23, very
late for a European harvest, and at that point, if you are going to get
botrytis then you will already have it. You go into the vineyard starting as
late as you dare. Every picker carries two buckets, one for the
botrytis-affected berries that are picked berry by berry and the other for
unaffected juicy, green berries. If the whole bunch is affected with botrytis,
then you put the whole bunch in. Yields are very low. We consider 10hl/ha a big
crop. Both buckets go back to the winery and you press the green grapes, settle
for two or three days and ferment them. Meanwhile you keep the Aszú to one
side. We learned that how you keep the Aszú is very important. In the early
1990s the rich Aszú attracted all manner of insects and flies, so you scattered
on some SO2 and blended the Aszú in a hurry. So we built cold storage where the
Aszú grapes could be kept, and they can stay there as long as we like whilst we
make the wine in quite a leisurely fashion.”

“We cool-ferment
the first wine at 16–18°C for between 21 and 25 days, as we want a slow
fermentation to make aromatic wines. Then we soak in the Aszú, and here you can
be generous: one ton of Aszú per 1,000 liters of wine, roughly half and half. Some
of the modern theorists want freshness – the French in particular, who create a
more Sauternes style of wine and add the Aszú to the unfermented must. But we
found that there is a big difference between soaking the Aszú paste after
fermentation rather than when the must is alcohol-free. It creates a different
process. The must does not obtain the same level of sugar out of the Aszú and
it doesn’t extract the same flavors, so you get a mild-tasting result. You do
not get that hit and tang, which is the very essence of Tokaji.”

“The
first time you add the Aszú, you have the richest result, and this usually goes
to make the 6-Puttonyos or Essencia. We then repeat the process, adding more fermented
wine – up to three times, so you have three qualities. By the third you have
the sugar but not quite the extract, and this goes into our entry-level wine.
The most extraordinary thing is the two kilometers of medieval cellars. They
are pitch dark and completely covered in mold, colder and damper than almost
any European cellar that I have been to. Such conditions create very slow
reactions between wine and atmosphere. From 2010 we changed the oak regimen so
that it has less influence, using second- and third-fill barrels that are 300
and 500 liters in size. We use more new oak for the single-vineyard.”Essencia

Hugh
Johnson offered me his own personal view on Essencia, the wine that is in fact
not wine. “Essencia [sometimes spelled Eszencia] is made from the drops of very
sweet juice that emerges from Aszú grapes which have essentially lost their
skins entirely and therefore there is nothing to hold the juice in. The first
vintage I was involved in, we had a lot of Aszú and nowhere to put it. So we
put it into plastic bins in the cellar, lined them with plastic sheeting and
put a system of plastic drainpipes at the bottom, so that the juice found its
way down into a plastic jerry can. It is incredibly viscous with sugar content
that I have seen up to 85%. It is almost unfermentable. You can drink it
straightaway or wait for development. The law states that it should be a
minimum of 5% alcohol, which is ridiculous, as it never happens. At Royal
Tokaji ours is about 2%. It is not strictly wine and for that reason the
historic Essencias that were drunk by the Tsars were probably made into more of
a "drink" by adding brandy or spirit. Certainly when I went into the
state cellars in the 1970s, I asked the old cellarmaster and he told me that of
course they added brandy, as customers wanted something stable that was
drinking. The Tsar would not have been impressed if there was no alcohol in
it.”<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1562177437971-image+%2868%29.png"> Bottles of Essencia are rare and expensive. Royal Tokaji releases them in lacquer boxes with a clear glass spoon. The cutlery is not for show; trust me when I say that Essencia tastes far better when drunk from a spoon, like a child being given medicine. 

Vintages

Zotlán Kovács summarized the earliest
vintages from the Royal Tokaji Wine Company.

“Nineteen-ninety
was a small, classic vintage with a dry summer and a cold, rainy autumn.
Harvest began with a limited amount of Aszú berries that came more toward the
end. The 1992 vintage was not the best in Tokaji. Summer was cold and rainy.
Harvest was delayed and the best fruit was picked in late November. We thought
that 1993 was the vintage of the decade at the time because the wines had great
complexity and structure. We started picking in September and finished in late
October. In this year the company decided that they should make a 6-Puttonyos
in order to show the potential of the vineyards, and we were the first producer
to use individual vineyard names. These will see eight years in barrel. It was
also the first vintage made completely on our own premises. The 1995 vintage
saw an early summer and warm conditions with welcome rains at the beginning of
September. The 1996 vintage is good-quality though it was more wet and rainy
during summer and autumn – there was a helpful breeze that helped dry the
berries that were high in botrytis levels. The 1999 vintage produced structured
wines that were high in acidity and purity.”

“The 2013
vintage saw a mild winter but a late budding because of snow. There was some
rain in early June, but July and August were dry with very hot spells that
caused some stress. There was good rain at beginning of September and a high number
of Aszú berries, except in two vineyards, Birsalmás and Mézes Mály, where we
were not able to select any Aszú because of the stress. The wines have a lot of
fruit and richness with good grape variety expression. From 2013 the law
changed so that Aszú wines must have a shorter two-year maceration instead of
three.”

The Wines

This
tasting was prompted by Royal Tokaji’s re-release of early vintages. The team
tasted over 2,000 bottles, rejected those that did not come up to scratch, then
filtered and recorked the remaining bottles for sale. They are labeled “The
First Decade” and released as 375ml and well as regular 500ml bottles. The
final release is 1,756 bottles.

I must
admit that although I eagerly anticipated these early vintages from the Royal Tokaji
Company, I found that the first vintages reflected the challenges and
rudimentary conditions faced by Johnson and his colleagues. Of course, these
bottles are important insofar as they signify the second coming of a centuries-old
winemaking tradition, one that survived communist rule by the skin of its
teeth. It is a remarkable, life-affirming tale. However, with the exception of
the Tokaji Nyulászó 5-Puttonyos, I found that the very earliest wines, from
1990 and 1991, had not aged particularly gracefully and most were of historical
interest only.

There is
no question that the first successful vintage was the 1993, and it is easy to
see the sudden uptick in quality, not least because Royal Tokaji finally had
their own facility. As Johnson stated in the interview, they have learned as
they have gone along, so it is no surprise that the most recent vintages are
more consistent. The 2013s show a great deal of promise, though it is a pity
that heat stress precluded production of either the Birsalmás or the Mézes
Mály. The tasting notes are there for readers to peruse.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1562175352979-tokaji+bottle+line-up.jpg"> 

Drinking The Royal Saxon Cellar

As “free
extra,” I am including additional notes about extraordinary ancient bottles of
Tokaji opened at a tasting tutored by Hugh Johnson a few years ago for the Fine
Wine Experience. They are unlikely to ever appear again. In terms of quality,
few match the otherworldly 1888 Essencia from the State Wine Museum. I remember
the dark black color, as if a witch’s coven had made it in a boiling cauldron.
It looked injurious to your health! Swirling the glass, it was so unctuous that
it left a small indentation in the center of the glass. With nothing to lose
except destroying my palate, I closed my eyes and took a sip. It was one of the
purest wines I have ever tasted. It electrified the senses. It was like an
ineffably intense mango and orange sorbet but with a mellifluous texture. Imagine
all that concentration and residual sugar perfectly counterbalanced by
razor-sharp acidity. The 1888&nbsp;could have been less than a decade old. It still ranks among the
greatest wines I have tasted.

But it
was not the oldest, not by a very long way. The climax to the tasting was two
bottles from the Royal Saxon Cellar. At the time, Michael Broadbent revealed
that they had come under the hammer in 1968, and the vendor was Dennis
Wheatley, incidentally a famous writer of the occult as well as a wine
merchant. Broadbent could not verify that they were exactly the same bottles,
but the probability was very high. When I composed my original article, Frank
Stryzewski, who was researching the history of Tokaji, suggested that they must
come from a parcel of 62 bottles sold in Dresden in 1927. The bottles
originated from the famous royal cellar of Augustus the Strong, elected king of
Poland in 1697, who accumulated impressive collections from several wine
regions, including those of Tokaji from the Szirmay and Pottornyay families
from Erdöbénye. The bottles were embossed with the crossed swords of the Royal
Saxon house and the word “Hofkellerei,” the place where some 10,000 bottles
were stored until the end of the 19th century. Stryzewski estimated the vintage
to be between 1650 and 1690, and examining my own photos, the two bottles appear
exactly the same as those auctioned in 1927. To put that into context, those
two Tokajis could have been made just 34 years after the death of William
Shakespeare.You Might Also Enjoy<a target="_blank" href="https://www.vinous.com/articles/hurdling-over-time-19th-century-madeira-feb-2019">Hurdling Over Time: 19th-Century Madeira</a>, Neal Martin, February 2019<a target="_blank" href="https://www.vinous.com/articles/cellar-favorite-1976-hungarovin-tokaji-aszu-essencia-dec-2016">Cellar Favorite: 1976 Hungarovin Tokaji Aszu Essencia</a>, Ian D'Agata, December 2016<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/hungary-s-21st-century-tokajis-jun-2014">Hungary's 21st-Century Tokajis</a>, Stephen Tanzer, June 2014<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/the-forecast-for-tokaj-sep-2001">The Forecast for Tokaj</a>, David&nbsp;Schildknecht, September 2001

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