Tokaji Aszú 5 Puttonyos 2016 [50cl]

Tokaj Classic owes its existence to a chance meeting. In 1993, classical musician András Bruhács travelled to the village of Mád and sought out István Szepsy, Tokaj’s most celebrated winemaker, who found him among the vines and invited him in to taste. Bruhács was won over, and within a year he and a small group of fellow musicians, including his brother, had taken on an old estate in Mád and acquired vineyards in two of the region’s finest sites: Királyhegy (King’s Mountain) and Betsek, both once owned by Hungarian nobility, along with a small plot of Muscat at Juharos. The vines sit on volcanic soils above the meeting of the Tisza and Bodrog rivers, where autumn mists bring the noble rot behind Tokaj’s famous sweet Aszú wines. Winemaker Imre Galambosi, a former mayor of Mád, keeps yields very low and works by traditional methods to make wines that will age for decades. Tokaj-Hegyalja was declared the world’s first classified wine region in 1737, and Mád sits at its heart.