Wine Of The Week: Royal Tokaji Essencia
A truly rarefied Hungarian wine that’s served at California’s The French Laundry and Miami’s Sexy Fish.
What if I told you an order of Essencia, a grail-worthy wine by stalwart Hungarian producer Royal Tokaj, wouldn’t come in a glass. At California fine dining destination The French Laundry, a 50mL serving of Essencia is brought to your table in a custom-made crystal spoon.
Essencia is one of the rarest wines in the world. It’s intensely concentrated, evocative, and incredibly laborious to make. Only a few thousand bottles are released every few years and each oe requires an intense amount of time and patience to bring to life.
It starts in the Hungarian countryside, a few hours outside Budapest. Every fall, harvesters walk through the vines again and again, picking only perfectly concentrated, deep ruby azsú grapes. They need a lot — on average, one spoonful of wine contains an average of 746 grapes. Once picked, the grapes are placed on racks to let the liquid naturally drip out of them, then sent to age in 13th century cellars deep under the winery. The resulting wine is pulled five to seven years later when it’s hyper concentrated, with the sugars hitting between 450 and 600 grams per liter (an average glass of wine contains 10).
And Essencia isn’t made every year — only the best grapes are relegated to the bottling, so years when the temperatures dip upwards or dive down won’t make the cut. Only eight vintages have been made over the past three decades.
The resulting wine is pricey, but wonderful. A deep almond color and rich with marzipan, chestnut, and candied orange peel. It’s almost syrupy in texture, but singing with acidity to cut through the viscosity. Only 2,300 bottles were made, so restaurants pour judiciously or try it at some of the country’s top restaurants, including The French Laundry, Gabriel Kreuther in New York and Miami’s Sexy Fish. $1,150 per bottle.
Kate Dingwall is a WSET-trained sommelier and spirits writer. Her work has appeared in Wine Enthusiast, Eater, Forbes.com, and Food & Wine, and she pours wine at one of Canada’s top restaurants.
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