![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Birthday highlights
My 43rd birthday was a week ago today. I didn't say much about it then because 43 isn't a very exciting age. However, we did go out for a nice meal at L'Express on Saturday night (their tartare and frites are to die for!). Afterward, we did something that I doubt we'll be doing again in the near future: We opened an Aszú Essencia.
For the uninitiated, Tokaji Aszú is a Hungarian wine to which has been added a paste of botrytized grapes during the production process. This adds intense sweetness, but because the underlying wine has excellent acidity, the result is remarkably balanced. For traditional reasons, it's graded in units of paste added to the wine, called puttonyos after a kind of wooden tub. Wines rated at 3 to 5, sometimes 6 puttonyos are customary. Above that is Aszú Essencia, which is among the world's sweetest wines and annoyingly costly. We had the Aszú Essencia 1995 from the Royal Tokaji Wine Company.
Wow.
I will avoid fancy wine-tasting language – although I could go on about caramel, raisins, orange highlights, and all that. Basically, think of the sweetest, thickest sherry you've ever had, subtract the flor taste, add more sweetness, and balance that with perfect acid. That's as close as I can get (not very). All I can say is that if you like sweet wine, you need to try one of these. As for me, my new goal is to taste the next level up: Essencia. I just have to win a lottery or something.
Crappy cell-phone photos to follow. However, these colors are entirely accurate.
For the uninitiated, Tokaji Aszú is a Hungarian wine to which has been added a paste of botrytized grapes during the production process. This adds intense sweetness, but because the underlying wine has excellent acidity, the result is remarkably balanced. For traditional reasons, it's graded in units of paste added to the wine, called puttonyos after a kind of wooden tub. Wines rated at 3 to 5, sometimes 6 puttonyos are customary. Above that is Aszú Essencia, which is among the world's sweetest wines and annoyingly costly. We had the Aszú Essencia 1995 from the Royal Tokaji Wine Company.
Wow.
I will avoid fancy wine-tasting language – although I could go on about caramel, raisins, orange highlights, and all that. Basically, think of the sweetest, thickest sherry you've ever had, subtract the flor taste, add more sweetness, and balance that with perfect acid. That's as close as I can get (not very). All I can say is that if you like sweet wine, you need to try one of these. As for me, my new goal is to taste the next level up: Essencia. I just have to win a lottery or something.
Crappy cell-phone photos to follow. However, these colors are entirely accurate.