Wine Review: Oremus 'Mandolas' Tokaji Dry Furmint 2018

For today's Wine-Searcher tasting our Wine-Director David Allen MW opens a bottle of Furmint, a dry Tokaji. A quite particular Hungarian dry wine made by a company owned by the Alvarez family, owners of Spain's legendary winery Vega Sicilia. The wine in question is Oremus 'Mandolas' Tokaji Dry Furmint 2018.
Tokaj-Oremus is an historic wine producer, located in the Tokaj region of northeast Hungary. The estate makes a range of the region's famous botrytized Tokaji wines, with sweetness levels ranging from three to six puttonyos.
The history of Oremus dates back to the 1620s. Remarkably, the Oremus vineyard is credited with producing grapes for the first Tokaji Aszú ever made. Legend has it that in 1650, fearing an attack by the Turks, harvest was postponed for two months. Grapes were able to dehydrated on the vine and eventually produced an exceptional, intensely sweet wine.
In 1993, the Alvarez family, owners of Spain's iconic Vega Sicilia, purchased the estate and founded Tokaj-Oremus Viñedos y Bodegas. The winery, located in Tolcsva, has 13th Century underground cellars where naturally sweet Tokaji wines are stored and aged.
Oremus has 33 hectares (81 acres) of vineyard land, planted primarily to Furmint with smaller amounts of Hárslevelü, Sárga Muskotály, Zéta, Kövérszolo, and Gohér. The vineyards have a continental climate and the nearby confluence of two rivers provides the ideal conditions at harvest that make it possible for grapes to be affected by botrytis. Oremus' late harvest wine is mostly made from overripe grapes whereas the Aszú wine is made from botrytized berries which are selected one by one in tries.
The winemaking process at Tokaj-Oremus is the same winemaking formula that has been used in the region for hundreds of years. The botrytized dessert wines, the Aszú and Eszencia, require a slow fermentation process and years of aging in small barrels in Oremus' ancient underground cellars before release. Mandolás a dry white wine made from Fumint is the only dry wine made here.
Find out more about this wine, its pricing and where to find it by following this link to the Wine-Searcher website: www.wine-searc...
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