There is a wine made in Hungry called Tokaj. Because of the spelling, people often confuse it with Tokay in Australia and Tokay Pinot Gris from Alsace. It has no relation to either of these wines.

Tokaj is loosely made by adding raisined grapes to the wine while it is being made. The sweetness from these sultanas leeches out making the wine sticky and syrupy.

This year, a series of appalling weather patterns destroyed our Riesling vineyard. When I went out to survey the crop, it was nothing but bunches of sultanas. Remembering the wines of Tokaj, I sent pickers out to harvest what turned out to be 2.5 tons of shriveled up, mummified grapes. Then, we organized 2 ton of frontignac, juiced it and poured the juice out over the sultanas. The dried grapes sucked it up, taking the moisture inside and rehydrating. 24hrs later, we squeezed the juice back out of the sultanas and we were rewarded with the most lovely nectar I’ve tasted.

The wine was cold fermented and bottled quickly. The winery smelt like Passiona cordial for a fortnight while this was going on.

Sadly, when you work with sultanas extraction rates and volumes are wine as small. The wine will not be easy to reproduce as we need quite extreme weather to make it happen again, so we are treating it as a one off. I hope you get to try it.

It should age particularly well.