Tokaji is becoming my dessert wine of choice. I’ve never had a really old one. I think the oldest bottle I had was 12 years old.
What happens to tokaji as it gets older in bottle? Does it develop secondary flavors or just fade away? Do you prefer tokaji young or old?
A friend of mine thinks they last forever due to the sweetness. But I swear I read an article in some wine magazine where the author suggested drinking them younger. I can’t remember the details though.
Thanks!
Not an expert here but I think there is a risk that some older wines may have not been manufactured at the same level of quality as more current wines with the threat of premox. If you like almonds and caramel maybe thats a good thing. I suspect you need to be selective on the producer.
They go on for a long, long time - the sweeter the longer I would think.
The 1995 Royal Tokaji Aszu Essencia I had a little while back was drinking wonderfully - although it could have gone on for many years yet. I was very impressed. Then I had a couple of 1975 Essencias, one from Oremus and the other from another house which I cannot quite remember off the top of my head. Those tasted almost ageless. I think they are nigh indestructible.
Joe - As with anything, you need to start with the winemaker and the grapes. Then you need to decide what you want to accomplish with aging the wine.
You probably recognize that there are different kinds of wine from the region, so I assume you’re talking about Tokaji-aszu, which is what most people think about when they think of the wine. Those are the 3,4,5,6 Puttonyos wines, which have increasing levels of sweetness. But even at the 3P level, they’re pretty sweet.
If you like aged sweet wine, for example aged Spatlese and Auslese, then by all means, age your Tokaji. I suppose the more “serious” wines would be the 5 and 6P wines and there’s a stupid category called aszuesszencia which is higher yet. Once in a while you find Naturesszencia but that’s rare and I kind of think it’s mostly for the Americans.
At any rate, if you have a good year and a good winemaker and good sites, you can age those wines for at least as long as you’d age anything from Sauternes and probably even longer. So in a few instances, the wines going back to the 70s are in fine shape these days. Those going back even longer can also be in fine shape, but again, in selected instances.
The problem is that the communist regime really trashed the winemaking. A few individuals tried to do their best to keep their traditions alive and in some cases they succeeded, but even they were limited by the technology available to them.
For example, they had huge cement vats for the wine. Those vats are now used for private tasting rooms and storage in a couple of the wineries. The first stainless steel tanks were brought in after 1989. Sanitation wasn’t all that great either. So you ended up with an oxidized style of wine. Some of those older bottles are brown. Most of the wine didn’t come from specific sites either - it went into the state-run winemaking cuvee. Since it didn’t matter how good your grapes were, and since the idea was to produce quantity, inferior clones were planted and everything was dumped together. In some cases the wine was even fortified to aid in preservation.
As I said - in spite of all that, in some cases the wine was still good. Unless you know the wine however, I’d have a lot more confidence in today’s wines. If you like them aged, I wouldn’t worry about them in your lifetime. Personally though, I like them young. The best should age as long or longer than anything from Sauternes.
For the reasons Greg stated, I think this is a very speculative question that noone can really know the answer to. You basically have three relevant eras, the pre-commie era whose wines had a reputation for aging very well, the commie era where the wines are mostly brown, lifeless, oxidized junk, and the current era where wineries have upgraded their facilities and begun to use modern techniques. I find the new modern wines to be absolutely delicious when they’re young but they are obviously a different animal than the Tokaj of any previous era. It’s uncharted territory and we won’t really know how they develop until we see it.
The evolution of Tokaji can depend on the number of Puttonyos.
And concerning Essencia, it depends on the type of Essencia, as some are more pure, more extracted than others.
From what I have drunk, covering a priod exceeding 150 years, I can imagine a scenario, with no pretention that it could be the truth :
I do not pretend that it is the truth, but I appreciate some very young for their freshness, and I love very old for their balance, and integration.
For my personal taste, I prefer 5 and 6 puttonyos to Essencia, which are too rich for me.
I am not a big expert on Tokaji, it is just my feeling.