Food Adventures
I Love Tokaji
I would make an utterly useless sommelier. I’m far too partisan about my favourite wines to be of any help with choosing what should go with the recipes in this book, and my fondness for experimentation is sure to lead to oenological disaster. All I will say on the matter is that the finest liquid in the world, ever, is without doubt Hungarian Tokaji Aszu* – the 5 or 6 Puttonyos versions – and it should be drunk at every available opportunity, day and night (any wine distributor wishing to challenge this notion is welcome to forward their claims to the usual address).
Tokaji is a Hungarian wine region with the world's oldest system of classified growths. Its soil is volcanic and clay and it has a micro-climate characterised by a hot summer and a long, sunny autumn with morning fogs, all of which helps the development of botrytis cinerea, or noble rot. The wines are intensely sweet, but with such good levels of acidity that they are never sickly, and have a wide spectrum of flavours. The puttonyos system is interesting: long ago the asz· grapes were collected in 36-icce (25-26kg) wooden hods called puttonys. 3-6 puttonys of asz· grapes (75-150kg) were used in each vat. It was trodden by feet, then one Gˆnci-cask (a 136 litre barrel) of must or wine from the same vintage was added.
It was soaked for 12-60 hours and stirred from time to time after which the liquid was filtered out with sacks. The remaining asz· paste in the sacks were trodden and the liquid racked to barrels, where it fermented slowly.
††† †††
The principle is the same today, but the puttony number now indicates the sugar content value of the wines: the more residual sugar content the wine has, the higher is its puttony number (from 3-6), and the more delicious it’s likely to be. Above the aszu comes Tokaji Asz· Eszencia, which is not to be confused with Tokaji Eszencia, the free-run juice of exclusively the asz·-berries, racked off without pressing and giving a nectar of unequalled, almost honey-like concentration and a price of around £500.
Incidentally, no Tokaji was received in return for this outrageous plug. I really do just love it. Stockists listed in the ‘Suppliers’ section.
If you’ve had any strange and wonderful food adventures that you’d like to share, please send them to research@thegastroanut.com
