puttonos

A designation found on bottles of tokay, a Hungarian wine produced in Aszú, indicating the composition of the mixture of grapes used to make the wine. (Hungarian tokay is no relation to the tokay grape or to the American dessert wine.)

The character of the Hungarian wine depends on soil and climate of a very small area (smaller than New York City) and a variety of grape called the Furmint. The Furmint grapes are left on the vine when ripe. In most years, the unpicked, over-ripe grapes are attacked by the “noble rot” that occasionally distinguishes French and German vintages. The berries shrivel and the concentration of sugar soars. The resulting “grapes” are known by the German name trockenbeeren.

In making tokay, the wine is fermented in standardized casks called gönci hordó (cask from Gönc), which hold about 120 - 140 liters. The must, the mass of fermenting grapes, is a mixture of Furmint trockenbeeren with ordinary crushed grapes. The trockenbeeren are measured out in wooden measures called puttonos that each hold about 27 liters. A gönci hordó that gets 3 puttonos of trockenbeeren produces 3-puttonos tokay. The more puttonos put into the cask the higher the quality of the resulting tokay; 5-puttonos is the highest quality.

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