2006 Kishegy Furmint - Tíz év után

Full bottle 1,222 g. A dry, cool vintage and they did a rigorous green harvest. The growing season was so late that they harvested for dry wines on 6 November (for context, this year 2025, they're looking to start picking in two weeks time, in the third week of August). Spontaneous fermentation in Hungarian oak barrels and aged for seven months in those barrels. 665 bottles made. Released 2016. It's kind of hard to get my head around the fact that the wine in this bottle is nearly 20 years ago. It's vibrating with life! So stunningly fresh. So vivid. It smells of jasmine and daphne blossom on a hot summer night. Lime blossom and lemon balm. Bitter lime pith, lanolin and lime-barley bonbon. It's heady and waxy, cryptocrystalline acidity hidden deep in the luminous and lunar curves of slow, sensual orbit. I left it open for three days, and it was as vivid and bright on day three as it was when just opened and new poured. A Peter Pan wine – I can't see this falling over any time soon! Géza Lenkey believes that long bottle ageing is important to understand Tokaj wines and their vineyards (hence releasing this 10 years after vintage), and this wine proves his point. It's thrilling. (TC)