The Story of Tokaji, the Wine of Kings

Some wines are admired; Tokaji was fought over by kings. The golden, honeyed sweet wine of northeast Hungary was the treasure of emperors, tsars and popes — Louis XIV himself crowned it “the wine of kings and the king of wines,” and it earned a line in the Hungarian national anthem. It is also, remarkably, the first wine in the world to have its vineyards classified — more than a century before Bordeaux¹.

The wine of kings

No wine has ever been more royally endorsed. In 1703 Prince Francis II Rákóczi of Transylvania sent a gift of Tokaji to Louis XIV of France, and the Sun King’s reaction became the wine’s eternal slogan⁶.

“Vinum Regum, Rex Vinorum” — the wine of kings, the king of wines.— Louis XIV, of Tokaji, 1703⁶

He was in good company. Tokaji flowed at the courts of the Russian tsars — Peter the Great and Catherine the Great kept detachments of Cossacks to guarantee their supply — and was prized by popes, by Frederick the Great and by Emperor Franz Joseph. So woven is it into Hungarian identity that the national anthem itself gives thanks for the nectar of Tokaj².

A gift of noble rot

The secret behind the wine is a fungus. Under the right autumn conditions, Botrytis cinerea — the “noble rot” — attacks the ripe grapes, shrivelling them like raisins and concentrating their sugars into an intense sweetness¹.

Tokaji was among the very first wines in the world to turn this apparent spoilage into treasure. By tradition the technique emerged in the 17th century — one story credits a delayed, war-threatened harvest around 1650 — though written mention of “aszú” wine goes back as far as 1571³. Growers learned to pick the botrytis-shrivelled “aszú” berries by hand and add them, in measured hods called puttonyos, to a barrel of base wine — the more puttonyos, the sweeter and more luxurious the result.

The world’s first classified vineyards

Tokaji’s prestige led to a genuine world first. In 1737 a royal decree turned Tokaj into a regulated, closed wine region, its vineyards graded by quality and its production and labelling governed by rules⁴. This system of ranking vineyards by their worth predates the celebrated Bordeaux classification of 1855 by more than a hundred years, and it is often called the first true wine appellation anywhere on earth⁵.

Fall and revival

The twentieth century nearly ruined it. Under communism, Tokaji was mass-produced for the Soviet market, sweetened and standardised, and its noble reputation faded into cheap, dull wine².

Then, with the fall of communism in 1989, a rescue began. Foreign and Hungarian investors poured into the region, reviving old single vineyards and traditional methods, and Tokaji Aszú has since reclaimed its place among the world’s greatest sweet wines⁵. The wine of kings, it turns out, was only sleeping.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• Wine in royal courts and noble houses
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• Commandaria: the oldest named wine

References

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Tokaji Aszú. ↑
2. Taste Hungary — Tokaji Aszú: The Story of the World’s Oldest Sweet Wine. ↑
3. Wines of Tokaj — History of the wine region. ↑
4. IVES — The history of the first demarcated wine region of the world: Tokaj. ↑
5. MasterClass — Tokaji Wine Guide: A Brief History of Hungarian Tokaji Aszú. ↑
6. Springer Nature — Tokaji Aszú: “The Wine of Kings, the King of Wines.” ↑

Recommended reading

Vintage: The Story of Wine

Hugh Johnson

A grand history of wine with a memorable account of Tokaji’s royal fame and its noble-rot secret.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses

Tom Standage

Places prized wines like Tokaji within the wider story of drink, power and prestige.

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