Tokaji Aszú is made from furmint berries shrivelled one by one by noble rot, picked singly into hods and measured in puttonyos, then macerated in a base wine to draw out their concentrated essence. The method is old: aszú appears in sources of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the vineyards were classified by 1730, and a royal decree closed the region's boundaries in 1737 — a century before Bordeaux's 1855.
Its court celebrity was unmatched. "Vinum regum, rex vinorum" — wine of kings, king of wines — ran the phrase repeated at Versailles, and the Tsars kept a Cossack detachment in the region to escort their supply home. Apricot, honey and saffron on electric acidity: Aszú is among the longest-lived wines made.