Hungarian Forint Exchange RateHungarian wine has a history dating back to at least Roman times. The best-known wines are the white dessert wine Tokay (Tokaji) and Bull’s Blood (Egri Bikavér), a full-bodied red wine.
The Tokaj Wine region became a World Heritage site in 2002. The cultural landscape of Tokaj graphically demonstrates the long tradition of wine production in this region of low hills and river valleys. The intricate pattern of vineyards, farms, villages and small towns, with their historic networks of deep wine cellars, illustrates every facet of the production of the famous Tokaj wines, the quality and management of which have been strictly regulated for nearly three centuries. It is the world’s oldest botrytized wine.
The Tokaji wine region represents a distinct viticultural tradition that has existed for at least a thousand years and which has survived intact up to the present. The entire landscape of the Tokaji wine region, including both vineyards and long established settlements, vividly illustrates the specialized form of traditional land-use that it represents.
Here are some famous consumers of Tokaji. In 1703, Francis Rákóczi II, Prince of Transylvania, gave King Louis XIV of France from his Tokaj estate Tokaji wines as a gift. The Tokaji wine was served at the French Royal court at Versailles, where it became known as Tokay. Delighted with the precious beverage, Louis XV of France was offering a glass of Tokaji to Madame de Pompadour entitled “Wine of Kings, King of Wines” (“Vinum Regum, Rex Vinorum”) .
This famous sentence is used to this day in marketing of Tokaji wines. Emperor Franz Josef had a tradition of sending Queen Victoria as a gift Tokaji Aszú wine every year on her birthday, one bottle for every month she had lived, twelve for each year. On her eighty-first and final birthday (1900), this totaled an impressive 972 bottles.
Tokaji wine has received accolades from numerous great writers and composers including, Beethoven, Liszt, Schubert, Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich von Schiller, Bram Stocker, Johann strau and Voltaire. The composer Joseph Haydn’s favorite wine was Tokaji. Besides Louis XIV, several other European monarchs are known to have been keen consumers of the wine. Louis XV and Frederick the Great tried to outdo one another when they treated guests like Voltaire with Tokaji. Napoleon III, the last Emperor of the French, ordered 30–40 barrels of Tokaji at the French Royal Court every year.
Pope Pius IV. (1499-1565) at the Council of Trient in 1562, exclaimed: Summum pontificem talia vina decent! (This is the type of wine that should be on the papal table). Gustav III, King of Sweden, loved Tokaji. In Russia, customers included Peter the Great and Empress Elizabeth of Russia. A newspaper account of the 1933 wedding of Polish president Ignacy Moscicki notes that toasts were made with 250-year-old wines, and goes on to say “The wine, if good, could only have been Essence of Tokay, and the centuries-old friendship between Poland and Hungary would seem to support this conclusion.”
As for Egri Bikavér (“Bull’s Blood of Eger”) is Hungary’s most famous red wine. It comes from the Eger wine region of northern Hungary. According to legend, the name originates from the invasion of Suleiman the Magnificient around 1552.
“To motivate and support the small group of soldiers during the Siege of Eger castle they were served delicious food and a lot of red wine. Among the Turkish soldiers it was rumored that bull’s blood was mixed into the red wine, as otherwise the strength and firm resistance of the town and castle of Eger could not be explained. Finally the enemy gave up.”
