This article is taken from the November 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £25.
Bem József Street in the town of Tokaj was once the Hungarian equivalent of the Avenue de Champagne in Épernay. Merchants from all over Europe came to buy the most revered sweet wine in the world. The Tsar would send a detachment of soldiers to make sure his precious Tokaji made it safely back to St Petersburg.
It’s a bit more low-key now, though still home to some cellars such as Erzsébet Pince. The winemaker Erzsébet (the Hungarian for Elizabeth) Pracser reminisced about the street’s glorious past and finished with “I hope that era happens again soon”. As well as Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empire, the wines were particularly popular in Poland.
Indeed, the street is named after a Pole: Bem József was a sort of East European Garibaldi who ended up in the service of the Ottoman sultan before dying in 1850.
Whilst kaisers, kings and tsars come and go, the Poles have remained stalwart customers. More recently, according to László Mészáros, winemaker at Disznókó, tourism in the region was saved by an influx of Poles after the pandemic. One of the foremost writers on Hungarian wines is Wojciech Bońkowski, Poland’s sole Master of Wine.
Outside Poland, Tokaji is a niche product despite its glorious history. The best stuff known as Aszú is almost comically labour-intensive. First the grapes need to be affected by noble rot, a special fungus that shrivels the berries concentrating the sugar. These then, depending on the heat, raisin on the vine and are picked individually.
I’ll say that again: each grape is picked individually by hand so that only the most concentrated are selected. These super sweet grapes are tipped into a dry base wine and fermented together. The result is a sweet wine like no other: its massive sugar levels balanced by an uncanny freshness.
All this effort to produce a wine that even from a top producer like Disznókó costs as little as £40 a bottle. The Bordeaux red Château Pichon Baron which is owned by the same company, AXA Millésimes, will cost you at least three times that and it is much less work to make.
In the 19th and early 20h centuries, Tokaji, Château d’Yquem from Sauternes or Beeranauslese from Germany were the most expensive wines on the planet. Sweetness was prized; now it’s considered unhealthy if not downright poisonous.
Tokaji does have certain advantages over its rivals: production is small, and the wines are considered quite fashionable at least in the wine bore circles I move in — unlike stuffy old Sauternes.
Even the greatest of them all, Château d’Yquem now has to promote its wines rather than waiting for the world to beat a path to its door as in the past, hence the recent collaboration with Christian Dior. The indignity!
At least Yquem has the halo of being a first growth. Climens or Suduiraut, whilst being almost as expensive to make (that noble rot thing again), come in at around a quarter of the price.
Daniel Wareham, sommelier at the Limewood Hotel in Dorset, asked me recently: “Where else can you buy legendary names like Climens for such a low price and from great vintages like 2001?”
All over the world producers of sweet wines are trying to work out how they can sell a product that just doesn’t make sense economically. If legendary names such as Sauternes or Tokaji find it hard, then spare a thought for places like Monbazillac or Jurançon.
No wonder producers are turning to making dry white wines. Suduiraut, also part of the AXA, makes a Blanc Sec that now makes up about 50 per cent of production, depending on the vintage.
It’s nice, though in my opinion Tokaji’s dry wines are more interesting. The Furmint grape creates steely intense wines which have something in common with the whites of Santorini.
But you really must try the sweet stuff even if you don’t have a sugary tooth. Whilst oligarchs and tech billionaires might not be interested in the wines of kings and emperors, that is very good news for the impecunious connoisseur.
You can pick up a bottle of Disznókó Tokaji 1413 Édes Szamorodni for about £20. Szamorodni, pronounced something like “Zarmer Rodney”, comes from a Polish word meaning “as it comes”. Rather than pick berries individually, whole bunches go in so you get a mixture of shrivelled and not so shrivelled grapes.
This means the wine is less sweet and crucially less expensive, though with plenty of that marmalade and honey character I love in Tokaji. There’s also a rare dry version, aged under a layer of yeast called flor like fino sherry, called Szaraz Szamorodni which is worth seeking out.
Once you’ve got a taste for Tokaji, then you can move on to the Aszu wines, like Disznókó Aszu 5 Puttonyos. It’s about twice the price of the Zarmer Rodney, but remember how much work goes into creating that golden nectar.
It’s tremendous with blue cheese, fruit tarts and the like. Whilst I love port at the end of a meal, Tokaji at only 13 per cent makes a lot more sense as I get older.
You can quite happily polish off a 50cl bottle between two with your pudding or even better instead of your pudding with no ill effects the next day. If it weren’t for all that sugar, you might even call it a healthy choice.
