Royal Tokaji Blue Label 5 Puttonyos Aszu 50cl

Product Information

After fermentation the wine is stabilised and matured for several months in tanks or barrels (the proportion of new and used barrels will vary according to the wine) on the fine lees. Late harvest wines are matured for four to six months whilst Sweet Szamorodni wine spends at least one year in our historical cellars. In 1920, following the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a small part of the Tokaj wine region (approx. 1.75km 2) became part of Czechoslovakia due to the Treaty of Trianon, while the rest remained part of Hungary. After World War II, when Hungary became a Soviet-influenced state, Tokaji production continued with as many as 6,000 small producers, but the bottling and distribution were monopolized by the state-owned organization. Dry Wines: The fine quality dry Tokaji Furmint is a relatively new development in the region. For centuries the main product of the area was the sweet wine, mainly the Botrytised selections. The dry Furmint got into the attention of wine connoisseurs and experts of the world when the Úrágya 2000 single vineyard selection had been introduced by István Szepsy. The wine expressed great minerality, complexity and structure, which has been experienced only in the finest white wines of historic regions like Burgundy or the Mosel before. The aging potential was also promising. In 2003 more producers of Mád village produced single vineyard selected dry Furmint wines with great success. Mád village with its almost 1200 ha had the opportunity to produce high quality dry Furmint wine in significant quantity as a commune level wine, which can express the unique volcanic terroir of the region, this wine is named after its appellation Mad and produced by István Szepsy Jr. in the Szent Tamás Winery.

A bottle of "genuine imperial Tokay" plays a prominent part in the Lord Peter Wimsey short story " The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste" (1928), which centers on identifying wines by taste. It is described as 'both sweet and coarse' and as 'horribly over-rated'. Understanding the difficulty of producing our Aszú wines and the incredibly small amount of wine we can make even in a great vintage helps to explain the prices, even though they are far below their early 20th Century peak.

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The sweetness of Tokaj aszú has traditionally been measured in puttonys. A puttony is a 25-liter wooden tub, which was used for harvesting the aszú grapes. The most prized types of Tokaji aszú were made as either a five puttonyos version or a six puttonyos version, which means that the equivalent of five or six tubs of botrytized grapes had been added to each cask of must or base wine. (In Tokaj, aszú is made in 136-liter Gönc casks). So the higher the puttony number, the sweeter, more golden colored, and more expensive the wine will be. (For a more concrete idea of the sweetness level, a three puttonyos aszú had from 60 to 90 grams of residual sugar per liter, a four puttonyos had from 90 to 120, a five puttonyos from 120 to 150, and a six puttonyos from 150 to 180.) The secret of our Tokaji Aszú lies in the wonderful acidity, which balances our extraordinary levels of sweetness. This combined with the incredible minerality of our volcanic soils makes our wines some of the easiest to spot in a blind tasting. During 2009, on the eve of their 20 th anniversary, the Royal Tokaji winery has undergone a metamorphosis which combines the best of tradition with the best of 21 st century technology. Service is always based on customer expectations. That’s why it will be very different in China, the US, and anywhere else. Most establishments find international levels of service but there will be local variants. Talented service staff will be able to adapt and this will always be the case throughout time. The Slovak wine region of Tokaj may use the Tokajský/-á/-é label ("of Tokaj" in Slovak) [2] if they apply the Hungarian quality control regulation. [2] This area used to be part of the greater Tokaj-Hegyalja region within the Kingdom of Hungary, but was divided between Hungary and Czechoslovakia after the Treaty of Trianon.

We are a small company and it is important for us to have service staff who are aware of our wines. Being a small business, we like to do things a little differently compared to the bigger wine brands, so it is crucial to us for service staff to have awareness and be personable. That’s why we give them the opportunity to come out to Tokaji and find out more about our company and our wines. Az elmúlt három évtized azzal telt, hogy vállalkozó szellemű borászok fáradságos munkával visszaszerezzék a tokaji bor világhírnevét. Tokaji wine received accolades from numerous great writers and composers including Beethoven, Liszt, Schubert, Johann Strauss, Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich von Schiller, Voltaire and Bram Stoker. The composer Joseph Haydn’s favourite wine was Tokaji. A reputation – supported by various Popes – for health giving properties, as well as lore – explored in some depth by the alchemist Paracelsus – that the wines contained gold also helped the legend grow. Szamorodni: This type of wine was initially known as főbor (prime wine), but from the 1820s Polish merchants popularised the name samorodny, (The word stems from Slovak, the Prekmurje dialect of Slovene, and Kajkavian Croatian, which used to be spoken before the hungarization of the Pannonian Basin. The word is an adjective and means "self-grown", "the way it was grown", or "made by itself"). What sets Szamorodni apart from ordinary wines is that it is made from bunches of grapes which contain a high proportion of botrytised grapes. Szamorodni is typically higher in alcohol than ordinary wine. Szamorodni often contains up to 100-120 g of residual sugar and thus is termed édes (sweet). However, when the bunches contain less botrytised grapes, the residual sugar content is much lower, resulting in a száraz (dry) wine. Its alcohol content is typically 14%.

The Wines

Tokaji wine became the subject of the world's first appellation control, established several decades before Port wine, and over 120 years before the classification of Bordeaux. Vineyard classification began in 1730 with vineyards being classified into three categories depending on the soil, sun exposure and potential to develop noble rot, botrytis cinerea, first class, second class and third class wines. A royal decree in 1757 established a closed production district in Tokaj. The classification system was completed by the national censuses of 1765 and 1772.