Tokaji

Tokaji is a famous white wine from Hungary’s Tokaj region, best known for its rich, sweet styles made largely from Furmint. Expect apricot, peach and citrus with honey, marmalade and warming spice, balanced by brilliant acidity. It’s a stunning match for blue cheese, foie gras, cheesecake, fruit tarts, crème brûlée and apricot desserts.

Taste:

Sweet, golden and very much deserving of its legendary status.

Tokaji can actually range from dry to intensely sweet, but the classic style most people associate with the name is Tokaji Aszú.

Expect apricot, peach, orange and citrus alongside honey, marmalade and dried fruit. You may also find flavours of ginger, spice, nuts and caramel as the wine develops.

What stops all that sweetness becoming overwhelming is the acidity. Furmint, the key grape behind many Tokaji wines, naturally retains plenty of it, creating that signature sweet-but-fresh balance.

Rich, complex and ridiculously long-lasting in the glass.

Dessert wine with main-character energy.

Food Pairings:

Sweet Tokaji is brilliant with rich desserts and salty, strongly flavoured food.

Blue cheese is one of the classic matches. Try it with Stilton, Roquefort or another strong blue cheese, where the saltiness balances the wine’s intense sweetness.

Foie gras and pâté are also excellent partners, with Tokaji’s acidity cutting through their richness.

For dessert, try apricot tart, peach tart, fruit tart, cheesecake, crème brûlée, tarte tatin or bread and butter pudding. Desserts featuring apricot, peach, orange, honey or caramel work particularly well.

Tokaji is also excellent with fresh peaches and apricots.

Drier Tokaji styles work with an entirely different menu, including grilled fish, roast chicken, pork and mushroom dishes, so checking the label before planning dinner is definitely worth it.

Similar Wines:

If you enjoy sweet Tokaji, Sauternes is essential exploring for another legendary dessert wine combining stone fruit, honey and brilliant acidity.

Monbazillac offers a similarly rich French style, while Beerenauslese brings concentrated fruit and sweetness from Germany and Austria.

Icewine achieves its intense sweetness in a completely different way, using grapes naturally frozen on the vine.

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More About Tokaji:

Tokaji comes from the historic Tokaj wine region spanning northeastern Hungary and a small part of neighbouring Slovakia.

The region’s most famous wine is Tokaji Aszú, traditionally made using grapes affected by noble rot. These shrivelled, intensely sweet berries are carefully harvested and used to create extraordinarily concentrated wines.

Furmint is the region’s key grape, often joined by Hárslevelű and other permitted varieties.

Historically, Tokaji Aszú sweetness was described using puttonyos, based on an old system involving baskets of Aszú berries. Modern regulations define sweetness more precisely, although you'll still see the term on bottles.

Tokaji was famously described as the “Wine of Kings, King of Wines.”

Subtle tagline? No.

But when you've been making world-famous sweet wine for centuries, apparently humility becomes optional.