2017 Oremus Tokaji Aszu 6 Puttonyos

Louis XIV called Tokaji the wine of kings and the king of wines. He was not being polite.

Here's what actually goes into it. In autumn the fog rolls off the two rivers that meet at Tokaj and settles into the vineyards, and Botrytis cinerea takes hold of the grapes. It doesn't take all of them at once, so pickers go through the same rows again and again over several weeks, pulling shrivelled aszú berries off the bunch one at a time. It is one of the most labor-intensive harvests in wine, and it only happens in years the weather allows it.

Those berries get macerated and gently pressed, and then six 25-kilo baskets — puttonyos — go into every 136-litre gönci barrel of must. Six is the top of the scale. Fermentation crawls along in new Hungarian oak for weeks. At the end they add back a few drops of Eszencia, the free-run nectar that seeps out of the aszú berries under their own weight. Oremus describes that as returning the wine's soul to it, which is romantic, and also literally what it does to the texture.

Then it sits. Two to three years in small Hungarian oak from the Zemplén forest, in cellars carved out of volcanic rock in the 13th century, followed by another four or five years in bottle before anyone sees it.

The estate matters here too. The Oremus vineyard was singled out for greatness in 1630, and the site is credited with the first Tokaji Aszú ever made. In 1993 the Álvarez family — the people behind Vega Sicilia — bought it and rebuilt the place. That's the same family discipline applied to a completely different grape in a completely different country.

Expect something deep amber and thick, sweet on entry and then cut clean by acidity that stops it dead before it turns cloying. Serve it cold, around 8°C, in a small glass. It will outlive most things in your cellar.