This month's World Heritage Site

Tokaji, Hungary

Before 1976, when California cabernet sauvignons and chardonnays won a stunning victory in a blind tasting in Paris against the France’s premier wines, most U.S. wine drinkers looked to Europe for superlative wines.

Besides the wines of Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Cotes du Rhone and Graves in France, knowledgeable American oenophiles also looked to Hungary’s Tokaji region, home to a distinctive white wine that some thought in its sweeter versions rivaled Bordeaux’s fabled Chateau d’Yquem.

Tokaji (which Americans pronounce “toe-kay”) is by far Hungary’s most fabled wine, exceeding the fame of Egri Bikaver, the country’s best known red wine that became a notable alternative quaff when the cost of French and Italian reds spiked in the 70s and 80s.

In its sweet forms, Sweet Szamorodni and the world-class Tokaji Aszú, Tokaji has built an international reputation. Unfortunately, the name was hijacked years ago by U.S. bulk wine producers. They wanted a name for cheap fortified wines that would connote sweetness to their mostly alcoholic customers, usually skid row denizens. “Tokay” on the bottle told buyers they were getting something sweet that could satisfy their cravings for real food.

As with many great wines, Tokaji Aszú’s ascent was something of a combination of accident and fortune. The Romans had grown grapes in the area, a rolling section of the Hungarian plain about three hours east of Budapest and only kilometers from Slovakia nd Ukraine.

Viniculture continued through the Middle Ages. When the Ottoman Turks invaded Hungary in the 16^th century, vintners in the Tokaji region, though not directly under the thumb of the Ottomans, often abandoned their vineyards whenever they perceived a threat from the Turks.

On one such occasion they returned and to find that “noble rot” (botrytis) had afflicted their abandoned grapes and shriveled them. As they attempted to salvage whatever juice they could from the desiccated grapes, they realized that they had the basis for an exquisite sweet wine, loaded, thanks to the botrytis fungus, with the pure essence of the grape. Tokaji was on the map ever after.

Remarkably, despite the inherent inefficiency and corruption of Hungary’s post-war Communist dictatorship, the Tokaji region continued to produce good wines. The vintages of 1947, 1956, 1957 and, especially, 1972 ("the vintage of the century”) were among the most notable ever produced. With the collapse of Communism, the region has been able to modernize its infrastructure and methods, and attract needed investment.

Throughout invasions, wars, and the rise and fall of governments, the region’s human and vinicultural landscape has remained surprisingly intact, with villages, vineyards and the area’s traditional deep cellars maintaining their medieval architecture and layouts. The physical integrity of the area led UNESCO to declare the “Tokaji Wine Region Cultural Landscape” a World Heritage Site in 2000.— Patrick Totty