Unveiling the Process: How the World’s Most Rare Wine is Produced

One of the most heartbreaking aspects of winemaking is a lost vintage, often a result of unfavorable weather conditions preventing grapes from fully maturing. Since 2009, several years have reposted such conditions, delaying until now the production of the ultra-rare Essencia by Royal Tokaji. Suitable conditions didn’t manifest for azsú berries in five of the six vintages between 2009 and 2016. However, 2013 presented the most significant disappointment.

Charlie Mount, Managing Director of Royal Tokaji, believes most producers in the Tokaji region would concur that 2013 should have been one of the best ever vintages. “The weather was perfect for azsú, and we had an impressive quantity of it as well,” Mount tells Robb Report. “There was plenty of Essencia, but when we reassessed the batch five or six years later, there was none we deemed worthy for bottling. It was one of the most gut-wrenching decisions we ever had to make—having such a vast amount of Essencia that didn’t meet our standards and choosing not to launch the 2013.”

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Although neither 2014 nor 2015 provided ideal conditions for enough quality azsú berries to produce Essencia, the summer and fall of 2016 offered perfect circumstances to capture the precious free-run juice (more on that later) that goes into making this prized elixir. And prized it should be. Only the eighth vintage of Essencia released in the winery’s 34-year history, sipping Royal Tokaji 2016 Essencia from specially designed crystal spoons that reveals its deep amber hue and aromas of dried apricot, ripe summer peach, and honeycomb. It rolls over the tongue like syrup with nimble viscosity and a sumptuous vein of acidity that keeps its inherent sweetness from overpowering its flavors of apricot nectar, peach pie, candied orange peel, and fresh honey that leaves a trail of tangerine zest in their wake.

Meaning “dry” in Hungarian, azsú berries are grapes that have been afflicted with Botrytis cinerea, the grey mold called Noble Rot that is responsible for the creation of Tokaji Azsú as well as Sauternes and Spätlese and Beerenauslese Riesling. Unlike common household molds, Botrytis requires an optimal setting to do its work; if it is present in a season that is relentlessly wet, it will ruin the grapes it’s growing on, making them useless for winemaking. But a period of humidity, especially one with cool, foggy mornings, that precedes a dry period just before harvest creates an ideal situation. The fungus dehydrates the grapes, which increases the proportion of fruit sugars and acids, offering a sweeter, more intensely flavored berry from which to make wine. Affected grapes shrivel to the point that they look like raisins.

In regular azsú wines, botrytized grapes are gathered in large baskets known as puttony and introduced to 136-liter barrels of base wine. The volume of baskets of sweet grapes incorporated to the base wine awards the Tokaji Aszu its Puttonyos marking of five or six Puttonyos. For a Tokaji Aszu wine to be branded today as five Puttonyos, it must contain not less than 120 grams per liter of residual sugar and a wine labeled as six Puttonyos needs minimum 150 grams per liter of residual sugar. Essencia’s sugars can scale between 450 and 600 grams, obligatory for strong acidity to counterbalance the sugars; Royal Tokaji’s 2016 tips the scales at 534.6 g/l of sugar.

Despite Tokaji Azsú being a preference of noblemen, poets, and artists for many centuries, Tokaji Essencia is in a class by itself. While Louis XIV may have declared that Tokaji is “The King of wines, the wine of Kings,” it’s Hugh Johnson OBE, the respected British wine writer and the founder of Royal Tokaji in 1990, who is known to relate to its Essencia as “medieval Viagra.” Each 375-milliliter bottle of Essencia contains juice from 88 pounds of dehydrated berries, translating to about 50,000 grapes; this stands contrasted with an average 750 ml bottle of dry wine, which calls for about two and a half pounds or nearly 200 grapes. The labor-intensive production method involves selecting the finest botrytized grapes from the top plots and then, as Mount puts it, “It’s a question of waiting.” The term “low-intervention winemaking” is used quite liberally in the wine domain, but Essencia genuinely captures the essence of the style.

Following the harvest, shriveled Furmint, Harslevelu, and Muscat Blanc grapes that have lost 80 percent of their water are set out on racks and left to drip. “We don’t press them or apply pressure so a little amount of liquid drips through a grate at the bottom of the collecting vat. We draw it off occasionally, we keep every grape variety and every site separate, and we do an initial selection,” says Mount. The juice imbibes atmospheric liquid from the high humidity wine cellar; naturally occurring yeast from the cellar settles on the surface and spontaneous fermentation initiates from the top. Up to 70 percent of that free-run juice is filled into appropriately sized glass demi-johns; as grapes from vineyard plots are kept distinct, the containers differ in size from 10 to 50 liters. The entire procedure takes at least five to seven years; Mount continues, “All along we’re waiting and tasting and towards the end we’ll make a final selection of the batches to be blended and bottled as Essencia.”

Though a bottle of wine boxed with a crystal spoon can feel somewhat gimmicky, the viscosity makes sipping from a spoon versus a glass a much efficient method of drinking with minimal loss. After all, 15 percent of the initial juice has already been lost clinging to the grates, and up to 30 percent more is discarded before blending. Only 2,300 bottles of this prized liquid were manufactured (priced at $1,416 for each), and each one contains approximately 25 tablespoon-sized pours; you would genuinely want to savor every last bit. If you can’t procure a full bottle but are keen to try, some select restaurants like Oiji Mi and Gabriel Kreuther in New York City have bottles and crystal spoons prepared for your sweet sipping delight.

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About the Author: Chris Lehoux

Meet Chris Lehoux, an experienced wine connoisseur and dedicated blogger with a deep passion for all things wine-related. With years of expertise in the industry, Chris shares insightful wine reviews, valuable wine tasting tips, expert pairing advice, and captivating tales of vineyard visits. Join Chris on a journey through the world of wine, where every sip is an adventure waiting to be savored!