Making Aszú wines in Tokaj is a painstaking and complex process. Farming and weather conditions have to be just right to have a chance of making the rare golden wines from the region. The knife's edge to get healthy botrytis is such that Royal Tokaji was last able to make all their single vineyard wines in 2008 - but a decade later they are back in the 2018 vintage, which they are calling a Royal Flush.
Formed in 1990, Royal Tokaji has undergone improvement and innovation in recent vintages to bring it to the very top tier of quality for sweet wine anywhere in the world. The terroir-specific wines are made in tiny volumes, each revealing remarkably different characters that showcase the kaleidescopic soils and aspects around the village of Mád, the countryside studded with extinct volcanoes.
Zoltán Kovács, head winemaker, has hauled the wines into the 21st century with much more precise, detailed winemaking (a new winery was completed in 2010). The 2018s produced here might just be the best we have ever tasted, absolutely blowing us away in a recent tasting. The Aszú wines are now made by adding the desiccated berries to fermenting must of earlier picked fruit, rehydrating the botrytised grapes and creating a wonderful balance of sweetness, piercing acidity and layered, moreish flavours. Fermentation takes six weeks to complete and the wines end up with about 200g/l of residual sugar. They are aged for two years in Hungarian oak and three years in bottle before release. Now ready for the world, these wines were so impressive that they are already hard to spit.
Each site is distinct in profile and this translates clearly into the glass. Mézes Mály is one of only two great first growths in Tokaj. Volcanic bedrock lies under deep loess, giving the wines a rich, rounded and bold sweetness accented with remarkable florality and vibrancy. Szt Tamás is a first growth and sits on southwest slopes above Royal Tokaji's winery in Mád. The soils are a distinctive red clay with blueish volcanic rocks on the suface and the wine is often our favourite here at Farr: dense and taut, it has a mineral, lip-smacking intensity and bold structure. Betsek is also a first growth and sits on south-facing slopes rich in clay and black volcanic rocks. This wine is so distinct with clove spice and a white pepper intensity, a wine of real bite and character. Nyulászó rounds out the first growths at this address and is on the outskirts of Mád, more volcanic bedrock this time overlaid with brown clays and lighter tuff soils that give this wine a racy acidity and real tension. Birsalmás is the smallest vineyard owned by Royal Tokaji and is made for the first time since 2008 this year. South and west facing slopes above Mád have volcanic topsoils, together with some loess and clay. A majority Kövérszolo, with some Furmint, gives this wine a supple, delicate and fragrant wine. The Gold Label offers an overview of just how good these wines can be, generous, immediate and characterful in Furmints lip-smacking acidity and heady botrytic character. Mostly sourced from Royal Tokaji's own classed growth vineyards.
If you buy one sweet wine this year, it should be a 2018 from Royal Tokaji. They are easily the best sweet wine releases we have tasted in 2024. Their freshness, balance and complexity for such young wines is astounding, as is their sense of place. Drink these now or over several decades - you will not be disappointed. They are world class and should be snapped up by any serious drinker. The wines are available to buy individually, but perhaps most interestingly in a mixed case that includes one bottle of each single vineyard wine, plus the Gold Label.
