Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1979. január-június (33. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)
1979-03-15 / 11. szám
Thursday, March 15. 1979. IO AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO* The Liquid Gold of Hungary It’s part of a national anthem, two popes , made jokes about it, Voltaire limned it and Noel Coward celebrated it on the stage. It is Tokay, the legendary wine of Hungary and one of the two or three best-known sweet wines of the world. Anyone who remembers Coward’s “Bittersweet” will recall the second-act scene in Herr Schlick’s cafe when the army officers sing: “Tokay, the golden sunshine of a summer’s day. ...” Hardly anyone will recall the Voltaire lines even though, as wine description, they are pretty good: ... et du Tokai la liqueur jaunis sante En chatouillant les fibres de cer veaux Y porté un feu qui s’exhale en bon mots Aussi brillant que la liqueur léger. The golden liqueur of Tokay While caressing the fibers of the brain. Carries a fire that breathes witticism As brilliant as the liqueur is light. The Hungarian national anthem, based on an 1823 poem by Ferenc Kölcsey, is of interest mostly to Hungarians; and as for the papal puns, forget them. They lose a great deal, as the saying goes, in translation. One of them, however, uttered by Pope Julius III at the Council of Trent in 1551, served to bring the wine to an audience outside Hungary for the first time. The Pope’s endorsement was important, there being no Stiller and ' Meara in the 16th century. Ever since, Tokay has enjoyed a considerable reputation in Europe, a reputation that, for some reason, has never really obtained in this country. Of course, we have never been fans of any kind of sweet table wine. Like sautemes, the famous sweet wine of France, Tokay is made from grapes allowed to remain on the vine until they are overripe and have been attacked by the so-called noble rot, Botrytis cinera, which reduces natural acids and concentrates the grape sugar. Recently, interest in these sweet wines has begun to grow in this country, thanks in part to the discovery that very good ones can be produced in our vineyards. Anyone who has tasted and enjoyed a fine late-harvest Riesling from, say, Chateau St. Jean in California’s Sonoma County, will be curious about its Hungarian counterpart. I n California, France and Germany, the intensity of the sweetness in late-harvest wines is determined mostly by the length of time the grapes remain on the vine. In Hungary, the technique is different. There, all the late-harvest grapes, called aszu, are trodden into a paste which is then added to quantity of must made from normal grapes: After a few days of fermentation, the sludge is removed and the remaining heavy must is transferred to small barrels for years of further fermentation and aging. The intensity of the wine is determined by the amount of aszú (pronounced “ah-shu”) paste added to the normal wine must. The paste is measured in seven-gallon buckets called puttonyos. The blending is done in 35-gallon barrels, which means that a Tokay listed as 5 puttonyos is all aszu. Thus it is the equivalent of the very finest sautemes or Trockenbeerenauslese from the Rheingau in Germany. Like Italy, Hungary is almost literally covered with vines. Most of them are on the Danube plain, on sandy soil of little use for anything but vines. There are some excellent red wines from Hungary, the best-known in this country being Egri Bikavér, from Eger, northeast of Budapest. Bikavér means “bull’s blood,” which is not a bad description of the color of the wine. Hugh Johnson put it thus: "The characteristic Hungarian wine is white — or rather warmly gold. It smells more of a patisserie than a greengrocer, if one can so distinguish between ripe yeasty smells and the green ones of fresh fruit. It tastes, if it is a good one, distinctly sweet, but full of fire and even a shade fierce.” Mr. Johnson, the British wine writer, is talking about the drier table wines, but he’s not far off the mark where sweet Tokay is concerned. There is yet another class of Tokay that may actually live up to the claim of being the rarest wine in the world. It is the essence of Tokay, called, in Hungarian, Tokaji Eszencia. To make it, the aszu grapes are heaped on a table or dumped into a kettle with a tiny hole in the bottom. The grape’s own weight forces out the sweetest essence of the juice, the true heart of Tokay, which is then fermented for many years in small oak casks. Something of an elitist product, only about 60 barrels of essence of Tokay were believed to exist in all of the socialist republic of Hungary a few years-ago. None of it is known to leave the country these days, but visitors to the state-owned cellars report that the fortunate among them have been granted a sip or two. Experts say that the few bottles that turn up injhe West from time to time usually are frauds; at best, they are combinations of the escenzia and the more readily available aszu. The real stuff, they say, will last 200 years if cellared properly. Assuming, of course, that one has time to wait. According to George Lang, restaurateur, Hungarian and raconteur — which is probably something of a triple redundancy — the escenzia was in past times imbued with almost magical qualities. In his book “The Cuisine of Hungary,” Mr. Lang quotes Charles Walter Berry, the late wine merchant of London, on essence of Tokay: “It should be jealously hoarded up,” Mr. Berry asserted just 50 years ago, “for use in cases of illness, pulmonary troubles in particular.” He then went on to claim that Pope Leo XIII attained great age mostly thanks to the escenzia that was supplied to him directly by the Austrian Emperor, Franz Josef. “I believe I am correct in saying that for the last six or eight weeks,” Mr. Berry recounted, "nothing passed his lips save this immortal liquor. ” Mr. Berry goes on to say that Edward VII of England, whose coronation was delayed because of his illness, was restored to good health exclusively by essence of Tokay. Mr. Berry, who graciously acknowledged that he was not a scientist, then went on to list another dozen or so grievous ailments said to be cured by the wine. It should be noted that similar miraculous properties were not attributed to Tokay Aszu, the best Tokay that most of us will ever taste. Which is just as well. It is more fun enjoying it for the taste than for its restorative powers. Nor is enjoying the five puttonyos Tokay all that difficult. It can be found in better stores and sells for about $7 — not too much for a chance to participate in a legend. ■ fin entrancing Life in Hungary’s stunning Westernstyle hotels can be so pleasant that visitors run the risk of turning their backs on the real world outside, including the ancient landmarks they came so far to see. Something akin to this happened to my wife, Valerie, and me when we stayed at the Budapest Hilton. We were so entranced that we found it difficult to venture into the wondrous city outside. The hotel, opened in 1977, has already achieved a kind of instant-monument status in this 2,000 year-old city. Rising six stories from Castle Hill above the Danube in Old Buda, the medieval heart of the city, it holds its own among experience the ancient splendors, even managing to enhance a mile-wide skyline that is second to none in the world. ILLUMINATED BUILDINGS For half an hour, we just sat by our window and watched the show of a city of two-million lighting up by night: first, Fishermen’s Bastion, illuminated below, alive with tourists exploring its zigzag galleries, then the Danube with its bridges and, across the river, lacework lights outlining Parliament’s hulking majesty and floodlights bathing the Basilica beyond in a mellow glow. After our first breakfast in the hotel, we meant to spend the rest of the morning exploring our historic neighborhood —its baroque and neoclassic mansions _ the old Town Hall of Buda, now part of the Academy of Sciences, the only surviving town gate, the Lutheran and Mary Magdalena churches, a Jewish museum housed atop the ruins of a medieval synagogue and the Hungarian Museum of Commerce and Catering. But we did not get to visit these sights until the afternoon and it was not until next dav that we reached that afternoon’s target: the oft-gutted Buda Castle, with its reconstructed Royal Palace housing several museums — three wings of Hungarian art, one wing of History of the Working-Class Movement, and best of all, within the thick walls of fortification, a labyrinthine collection of archeological “finds”. Alan Levy Villagers hold vineyard parades to celebrate the annual harvest of grapes for Tokay, Hungary’s legendary sweet wine.
