Our friend Gera of Sweetsfoods.com written a very useful guide about sweet white wines today. I do reccomend you to read his article.
In the end of his post he asked us about the sweet wines we know & wines we love.
Most of you may know that I'm a red wine girl who adores spicy, strong wines like Merlot & Syrah. However I wanted to share a special wine with Gera and his readers (And also with you, guys ;) It's possible that many of you know about this wine, but it's not a mistake to remind it or let others learn about it.
One of the sweetest wines I know is a Hungarian wine:
Royal Tokaji Essencia
(Only 1400 bottles were produced in 1999 and each was sold to $500)
Essencia has a very hard producing process. White grapes are left to "Botrytis Cinerea" (a kind of fungus for good fermentation) process, then before they are sent to pressing, they are let to ooz the first grape water by crashing/pressing on eachother while transporting.
1 ton grapes give 10 litre (10 quarts) liquid. Rather like "honey" (that sweet kind of liquid)
They leave the wine to fermentation for 5-6 years. In the end it comes into a sweet wine with 2-3% vol. of alcohol, and 600-850 grams (21-30 ounces) of sugar per litre (per quart)!
It has taste notes of honey, apricot, quince, marmelade, caramel and almond.
They call Essencia "the liquid gold". It is said that Essencia was drunk by kings, princes, and cardinals as a potion of youngness and long life through the history.
Essencia is served with a crystal spoon as it's rather thick, and precious. Essencia can be left to be aged for 50 years.
As I mentioned before I'm a real red-wine-girl, however I can taste only very very special white wines as long as they are really very special. Though I'm not sure if I could ever wait even for 10 years to taste this wine!
Could you?
notes:
1) photograph is from wine.com
2) I translated the basic information about Essencia from a Turkish magazine on alcoholic beverage culture, Gusto.
3 comments:
Bal glad my post about sweet white wines inspired you to make this post and of course thanks so much to put the link to it!!
The Tokaji Essencia is the highest in price $500 per bottle wow…this is a strong price but they're more expensive in wines…
As you expressed, this is a wine for kings and queens before and also nowadays :)
The Esencia are wonderful as gifts for holiday seasons… lol ;)
Bal you've a very good taste in wines and as you mention you're a red wine girl but the Tokaji worth to drink it, don't you?
You should taste the Tannat red wine of my country, I think will like you :)
Thanks and cheers!!
Gera .:. sweetsfoods
Well, I'm not that rich so I couldn't afford to be buying Tokaji each weekend!
Rioja is my favourite wine, or a nicely chilled Chardonnay.
Hi Gera :)
I wonder if I could find Tannat in Istanbul. (Hmm there are a few gourmet shops. I better have a check)
And Clark :D I wouldn't be -able to- purchaise it every weekend. But I'd appriciate it once a year. Or... once in 5 years? hmmm once in decade :)))
I agree with Gera... that would make a very good gift of season :D
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