Glass of gold

Istvan Balassa, chief viticulturist at Grand Tokaj, says volcanic soils can vary on different sides of the same mountain.

Roots of tradition

Since medieval times, "Tokay" has largely meant the rich sweet wine known as aszu. Like all late-harvest wines - and aszu is the latest harvest of all except for ice wines, it is expensive because growers have to gamble, leaving grapes on the vine well past the usual picking time so they develop extra sugars. Some years the weather doesn't play along, and a sudden freeze catches growers off-guard. Even if the grapes don't freeze, sometimes the growing season isn't long enough to produce "aszu berries" - shriveled bronzed grapes with an intense sweetness.

"If we're lucky, we get three harvests of aszu berries in 10 years," says Istvan Balassa, the vineyard boss at Grand Tokaj. The production process also demands extra time and labor. Although a bottle of aged Tokaj aszu can command $150 - and collectors pay much more for bottles from the harvest of their birth year, many winemakers don't want to risk everything on aszu.

So most are also making something less-traditional, a dry white. The antithesis of aszu, it's not sweet, it's not expensive, and earlier harvests mean you get drinkable wine virtually every year.

The Tokaj industry thrives on two principal grapes, furmint and harslevelu. To oversimplify, furmint has a richer palate, while harslevelu delivers a more compelling aroma - which is why many Hungarian whites are blends of the two.

But tasting reveals it's far from simple, notwithstanding the different ways winemakers make dry whites.

I find myself frowning at a glass.

"I feel like I should know the flavors coming through," I murmur as I swirl and spit yet again.

"The descriptors for furmint include chamomile, loquat and dill," says Grand Tokaj's award-winning chief winemaker, Karoly Ats. We can taste them all with that prompting, including the haunting light fugue of dill.

"That's really interesting," I say, swirling again.

The challenge: Nobody agrees on what "dry furmint" is.

Variety, however, isn't necessarily bad.

"I believe we need very different, hand-crafted furmint wines, reflecting on the maker and the terroir," says David Varga-Sabjan, who heads the Beijing office of the Hungarian Federation of Winecraftsmen. "Then we need a million bottles of standard style, easy to enjoy 50 yuan ($7.50) furmint."