Day 16: 19th June. Tokaj, Hungary.

Today, we set out east from the Danube to discover the "Wine of Kings, and the King of Wines", as the French King Louis XIV aptly named, the Tokaj Aszu wines.
These wines are made from berries that acquire a "noble rot" which occurs only in a fungus that exists only in this region. The wine region Tokaj itself has been a UNESCO listed World Heritage site since 2002, and the largest estate, the Tokaj Hetszolo, was the one we went to for our special tour and wine tasting.

 We stopped by the little town of Eger on our way to Tokaj.

 Our team doing an impression of faces =)

At the Tokaj-Hetszolo Vineyards.

Rows upon rows of maturing vines, and tiny little berries of grapes emerging. The harvesting season is extremely late, in October.

And this is where we try all the wines! Fabulous ambience! In these natural caverns, the wines are left to mature symbiotically with a fungus that grows naturally in these caves only, and the fungus maintains a constant 9 deg Celsius temperature in these caves using the alcohol evaporating from the maturing wines. Natural "air-conditioning"!

There is nothing to match a Tokaj Aszu for its sweetness and pure flavour. Whereas ice wines have sugar added, the Tokaj Aszu have their sugar content purely from the Aszu berries which are affected by the fungal fermentation. This, together with an extremely difficult yield, results in these wines costing a huge amount per bottle, and are appreciated by wine connoisseurs the world over.

Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and intoxication, equated with the Greek Dionysus, celebrates the Tokaj Aszu at the entrance of our Wine Cellar.