Istvan Szepsy – Tokaji Szamorodni 2016 6x 50cl Bottles

Colour: golden yellow. Nose: elegant, rich, notes of figs, pineapple, peaches and citrus fruit. Palate: this is the most astonishing sweet Szamorodni whose depth, richness, sweetness, purity and pise easily outclases other producers’ 5 puttonyos Aszu wines. Only 10852 bottles of Szepsy, Tokaji Szamorodni 2008 was bottled! This amazing wine goes very well with foie gras, blue cheeses, chocolate desserts and of course just by itself as an aperitif. There are winemakers and there are alchemists; how else could you explain the pureness of Szepsy’s wines, the elegance of his fruit and the harmony of structure? And yet, like most great wine-makers, his wines are not about what he does as much as what he does not do. There is no over-working the fruit at this estate, no unbalanced wines due to ‘ambitious’ winemaking. The philosophy is all about preserving the quality of the fruit and not about enhancement by artifice or sleight of hand. If Szepsy’s fruit traces the purest possible line from the vineyard to the bottle, the man himself can boast a lineage that goes back close to the origins of Tokaji: He is the direct descendant of Szepsy Lacko Mate who, in 1631 was the first person to write down the Tokaji making process. Tokaj wine region is a historical wine region located in northeastern Hungary. It is also one of the seven larger wine regions of Hungary. The region consists of 28 named villages and 11,149 hectares of classified vineyards, of which an estimated 5,500 are currently planted. Tokaj has been declared a World Heritage Site in 2002 under the name Tokaj Wine Region Historic Cultural Landscape. Szepsy has around 50 hectares under vine in largely rocky, volcanic soil. Though traditional in his approach, he constantly searches for new refinements in his quest for perfection. Fermentation and maturation takes place in wood. His yields have been described by none other than Michel Bettane of the Revue du Vin de France as ridiculously low (we could add, off course that they are Mad!). The wines have an almost sacred reputation and justifiably so as this example will prove.