Furmint is the grape of Tokaj, and everything about it seems designed for noble rot: late ripening, thin skin, and an acidity so ferocious it survives any concentration. An offspring of Gouais Blanc — half-sibling, therefore, to Chardonnay and Gamay — it hangs into late autumn while botrytis shrivels berry after berry.
Those aszú berries, picked one by one into hods, made Tokaji the courts' wine of the eighteenth century, and in 1737 a royal decree closed and classified the region — the first such delimitation in the world. Communism reduced the wine to syrup; since the 1990s the great aszú has been revived, and Furmint has found a second life as a dry white of smoke, pear and salt.