Leaves on the main road on a sunny September afternoon were a sure sign that summer in Slovakia was nearly over and that the grape harvest was about to begin. But although I expected a lot of buzz around the main Tokaj village called Mala Trna, there wasn’t a person in sight. Just some bees going about their business. In France and Italy, wine-producing regions like this one are full of tourists and winery owners promoting their products.
Not here. Slovak Tokaj is one of the smallest wine regions in the world, according to local tourism organizations and wine producers, with only 2,241 acres.
Hungary’s Tokaji (both wine and region) enjoys a high profile among the world’s prominent wine countries. But Tokaj in Slovakia, which was once part of the Kingdom of Hungary, has remained in its shadow.
Even though the seven villages belonging to the Slovak Tokaj wine region have been visited by many of the nation’s presidents (including the current one, Andrej Kiska), and Tokaj wine has been praised by emperors, popes, writers and composers throughout history, the region shielded by the Zemplen Hills remains quiet and off the radar for tourists.
“It is an undiscovered jewel,” said Jaroslav Macik Jr., who is part of the second generation of winemakers who started their businesses in the region after the Velvet Revolution that ended four decades of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989.
The Tokaj region produces naturally sweet puttonyo wines, marked with numbers 3, 4, 5 or 6, with 6 being the sweetest and rarest. (The 6 is wonderful with a dessert after a fancy dinner or lunch, but I also love the delicacy and lightness of the 3 and 4.)
The secret of the sweet wines is the fungus botrytis cinerea, the so-called noble rot that attacks grapes, generally in very humid weather. Because of that, puttonyo wines have a dark, honey color and an extraordinarily rich taste. “This wine is unusually complex; its aroma is full of dried fruit, from apricots to mango and dried figs,” said Tibor Vittek, the editor-in-chief of the Slovak wine magazine Vinoteka. Despite the high level of sugar, “a good Tokaj wine never feels flat or harshly sweet,” he said.
There are also appealing dry wines in Tokaj, made from the three types of grapes grown in the area that are used in all Tokaj wines. “Just as Bordeaux has its cabernet sauvignon and merlot or Brunello di Montalcino has its Sangiovese, Tokaj has its furmint, lipovina and muscat,” Vittek said.
The essence of the winemaking process in Tokaj lies in a traditional oxidative technology; the wine matures in oak barrels with small holes on top to allow oxygen to enter — and the dark mold growing on the walls of the cellars, dressing the bottles and oak barrels in what looks like black fur. The mold, Cladosporium cellare, absorbs the alcohol fumes evaporating from the wine barrels. “It clears the odor in the cellar and helps create a unique microclimate for Tokaj wines,” said Maria Macikova, a wine producer from Mala Trna. The soft black mold and Tokaj wine are mutually beneficial. “It’s a magical symbiosis of the wine and the minerals,” said Nada Kapralova, a winemaker from Velka Trna.
The wine region is in the southeastern corner of the country, about an hour’s drive from the second-largest city in Slovakia, Kosice. The easiest way to get to the villages from Kosice is by train or rental car. I chose the latter option, although the train might be a bit easier for a first-time visitor. Compared with the much larger and much more developed wine region in Hungary, the Slovakian wine country keeps it simple — and affordable. “We want to offer a more personal approach to visitors,” Macik said.
“We don’t want to commercialize it too much; there are enough wineries like that elsewhere,” said Kapralova. And since it’s not very practical to explore the wine country as a driver, I decided to continue my three-day trip on a bike, rented at the Tokaj Macik Winery. From Cerhov, which has a small wine history museum, I took the road up toward the vineyards and wine cellars, savoring the sunny weather.
It proved to be a rewarding travel option — although sometimes challenging on the hills — with my favorite stop being the new viewing tower in the shape of a wine barrel in the vineyards above Mala Trna.
Accommodations in the area tend to be low-key. The wineries J.& J. Ostrozovic in Velka Trna, Tokaj Macik in Mala Trna and Zlata Putna in Vinicky all have their own small hotels. Historic cottages, however, can be an interesting option for the travelers looking for cozy authenticity. One of them, called the Cottage, appropriately enough, is in Velka Trna, overlooking the village and green vineyards from a tranquil hill. The 100-year-old white house with a welcoming porch is decorated with antiques, vintage hand-painted plates and a kitchen counter made of old red bricks. Kapralova, the winemaker, rents out the cottage, which can accommodate up to 13 guests, as part of a small family business. She lives next door with her family, and is on hand to help with anything — from wine cellar visits to cooking dinner.
Apropos of dinner. Although there are not many restaurants in the villages, several of the wineries serve delicious regional cuisine. The owners will happily bring you holubky, a meat-and-rice mix wrapped in a cabbage leaf (my personal favorite), the fresh pork specialties or lokse, salty pancakes paired with meat as well as sweet fillings. The Zlata Putna restaurant serves homemade chicken soup, goose liver specialties and fish from the nearby Bodrog River.
Ready to experience the heart and soul of Tokaj, I entered the deep, cool cellar at the Tokaj Macik Winery. Pretty tea candles gave the place a romantic feel as I walked down a dark tunnel. Tokaj wine cellars, listed as historic sites by the Slovak National Cultural Heritage Fund, were originally dug deep in the ground as places to hide during the Tatar invasions in the 15th and 16th centuries. Residents quickly discovered the beneficial effect the cold cellars had on storing vegetables and on wine fermentation.
Today the cellars, with their black mold, are the treasures of the Tokaj region. The tunnels within them are lined with dark oak barrels, and there are shelves filled with dozens of vintage bottles. “These wines can be laid down to mature in a bottle for an astonishingly long time. I have tasted several aszu/vyber from the 1930s, which were still in perfect condition,” said Daniel Ercsey a co-founder and the editor-in-chief of the website WineSofa.eu, using Hungarian and Slovakian terms for sweet wine (specifically puttonyo wines).
Visitors can also get a taste of Tokaj history. They can learn that the first winemakers lived in the Tokaj area in the Roman era of A.D. 300, and that viticulture was revived in the 13th century when the Hungarian king Bela IV colonized the region with Italian settlers who brought in new kinds of grapes, including furmint. Historians and philosophers wrote about Tokaj’s ability to cure various illnesses and problems — from fever and indigestion to laziness. According to more recent research, carried out in the 1990s by Comenius University in Bratislava, Tokaj wine is full of natural antioxidants, and moderate consumption can help with prevention of cancer and cardiovascular or rheumatic diseases.
In the 18th century, wine from Tokaj was delivered to kings and rulers throughout Europe, and it was enjoyed by Beethoven, Schubert, Voltaire and Goethe. “Tokaji sweet wines were already renowned in Europe as far back as the 15th century, and a century later even took pride of place on the table at royal courts. At that time, people consumed far less sugar, thus natural sweet wines were greatly appreciated,” Ercsey said. Louis XIV loved Tokaj so much that he awarded it the title “Vinum Regum, Rex Vinorum” (“Wine of Kings, King of Wines”).
After a detour to the past it was time to start tasting.
“I can’t compare it to anything. I’ve never drunk anything like this,” said Sebastien Louit, a French tourist I met in the winery during my visit, referring to one of the puttonyo wines at the Tokaj Macik Winery.
Other large wineries worth visiting include Ostrozovic, Zlaty Strapec in Vinicky, Tokaj & Co. in Mala Trna and Chateau Vinicky. Some of the oldest cellars in the region can be found in these wineries, and staff members usually speak several languages. English is common among 20- and 30-somethings in Slovakia, but pretty rare among older residents, so be aware that some things might get lost in translation if you visit the smaller, family-owned cellars or local sights without a translator.
Some of the prettiest cellars owned by the smaller wineries can be found in Velka Trna, with around 20 cellars open to visitors scattered among 33 historic stone portals, as entries to the deep cellars are called, and in Mala Trna.
Most of the cellars in Mala Trna are hidden behind the seven stone portals on Medzipivnicna Street, but some of them can be found among the gardens and houses of the village and are used mostly by residents.
Appointments are required to visit most of these wineries; many of them also will be accessible during the annual event called Open Tokaj Cellars Day, scheduled this year for Sept. 17. (The website tokajregnum.sk is a good resource.)
A large number of the wines produced — and offered for tastings — by smaller wineries are not sold in wine shops or supermarkets.
The future of Tokaj wine seems to lie in the lighter dry varieties although the winemakers face a difficult challenge of reviving the fame the region enjoyed in the past. “Tokaj wine, in particular sweet Tokaj, has for centuries been the world’s most sought-after wine and for a long time was the most expensive too,” said Ercsey. “The task now is for it to regain its former renown, which was seriously damaged by mass production under Communism.”
He said that dry furmint is aiming to be the next star wine from Tokaj. “Unfortunately, the entire region, Slovak and Hungarian combined, is not large enough for the producers to supply the whole world with sufficient dry furmint, so there is only one option available: limited number of bottles, high quality, premium price and intensive marketing,” he said.
As I taste a glass of furmint in a dark cellar at Macik, I notice that the walls and the ceiling are covered in coins, almost obscured by the distinctive mold. The owners tell me that it’s a local tradition; visitors stick a lucky coin on the wall if they want to come back one day. And so I do, too.
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