Furmint

Furmint is the principal grape of Tokaj and one of the most acid-driven white varieties in existence, which is precisely why it can carry the extraordinary sweetness of Tokaji Aszú without collapsing.

Its thin skin makes it highly susceptible to Botrytis cinerea, and the autumn mists rising off the Bodrog and Tisza rivers in north-east Hungary provide exactly the right conditions. Botrytised Furmint berries — aszú — are the basis of one of the oldest deliberately produced sweet wine traditions in the world.

The more interesting recent development is dry Furmint. Hungarian producers began making it seriously in the 1990s, and the results have established it as a genuinely fine dry white: high acidity, a firm mineral spine from the volcanic soils of the Zemplén hills, and flavours of green apple, pear, lemon and quince with a smoky, sometimes almost flinty character. Barrel fermentation suits it, and the wines age well for a decade.

Comparisons with Chablis and with dry Riesling are both reasonable and both incomplete. Furmint has more body than Riesling and a distinct smoky, waxy quality that neither comparison catches.

It is also grown in Slovenia as Šipon, in Austria as Mosler, and in small quantities in Slovakia and Croatia.

It ripens late and accumulates sugar readily, which is a liability in a hot year and an asset in Tokaj. Its acidity is the constant, and it is the thing every style built from it depends on.

The dry Furmint category barely existed before 1990 and is now the most interesting thing happening in Hungarian wine. State-era production in Tokaj was geared entirely to sweet wine for export, and the idea of making a serious dry white from the same grape had to be rebuilt more or less from scratch after privatisation.

The soils do a great deal of the work. Tokaj's Zemplén hills are volcanic — rhyolite, andesite and loess in varying proportions — and single-vineyard bottlings from sites like Szent Tamás and Betsek show differences pronounced enough that the region has begun formalising a cru classification.

Its susceptibility to botrytis is not optional: in a damp autumn the fruit will rot whether or not sweet wine is wanted, which is why dry Furmint is generally picked earlier and from better-ventilated sites. Growers describe the two styles as competing for the same fruit rather than complementing each other.