Ep. 1059 Map 32 Tokaj | Jumbo Shrimp Maps

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This has been a journey of development since Stevie Kim discovered Rosie Baker's hand drawn maps on Instagram through two years of work by our in house editorial and graphics team, and now the maps are available to purchase in beta form while they undergo the final briefing and editing by our expert advisory board. It's a three layered project because we know everyone learns differently. We now offer the complete box set of thirty nine maps. This series of podcasts with the maps narrated by our crack team of wine educators. And finally, the study guide book, which will be published later this year. Our map project is in no way a substitute for the materials set out by other educational organizations, but we hope all the wine students out there will find our map project a new exciting and useful tool for learning. For more information and to buy the maps, please visit our website at mama jumbo shrimp dot com. Hello and welcome to the jumbo shrimp wine study maps podcast. I'm Jill Gordon Smith, and I'm going to be taking you through map number twenty seven Takai. We're going to have a look at the wine styles. We'll talk a little bit about the wine making techniques and the natural and human factors that you'll find in the vineyard and winery that really affect the style of wine. This is a question that's very often asked in WCT level three exams, and this map absolutely gives you a head start in understanding the styles of wine and how to answer a question about Takai. So where is Takai? So Takai is in the northeastern corner of Hungary. It extends from the town of Takai into the foothills of the Zempland mountains towards the Slovakiaakian border, and you'll see the Capathian mountains very close by. It has a long standing reputation for producing premium petritos sweet wines, but late harvest sweet wines and dry wines are becoming more and more popular. The climate of Takai is a moderate continental climate, so it has very warm summers and winter can be very cold, but the region sheltered from the worst of the winds by forested mountain peaks. Vineyards are planted on slopes, which of course helps reduce the risk of winter cold and frost damage. So importantly, There are a couple of rivers here, very important rivers, the bodrog, and the Titsa rivers, and they have a lot of tributaries, and they help generate the early morning humidity necessary for the development of noble rot. And these are the styles of wines that Hungary or Takai is most known for. Rainfall is very low and around half of this falls during the growing season, and they're not permitted to irrigate here. Autumns are very warm and dry. They provide the ideal conditions to shrivel the grapes, And those two major rivers that Tits are in the Bodrog, they meet in the town of Takai. And the Bodrog floods regularly. So there's lots of marshes and and water meadows. There's also very moist air in the morning which gives you folks in autumn, which is ideal for the development of atriitis. And then you get those lovely warm, sunny afternoons that control the development and they limit the bad rock. There are six committed grape varieties in Tokai, but the most important for the Tokai PTO wines would be ferment. Hass levaloo and Saga muscataali, which is muscat blanca pitty gram. Fermant is, by far the most planted grape in Takai. It's very versatile, and it can produce high quality wines from dry to sweet. It's late ripening. It has a slightly thicker skin and needs to cause long, sunny, growing season to ripen fully. However, even when fully ripe, it maintains very high levels of acidity, which is really important. Fermint is well suited to the production of sweet wines, and that's because it's particularly susceptible to pateritis. So it makes it a vital component in azu wines, which we're going to talk about. As they ripen, the grapes naturally accumulate high levels of sugar, and they're further concentrated by the action of pateritis, which shrivels those grapes. And also later harvesting. And that's all balanced by higher acidity in even the sweetest wines. Dry wines are produced in a range of styles from those which are intended to be drunk young to more age worthy examples and some are often matured in oak. They can be very full bodied with high levels of alcohol, but with improved Viticulture practices, it's now possible to get wines that are ripe and at medium alcohol levels. Single varietal dry wines are increasingly common. Typical flavors of ferment would be lemon, apple, and pear. The wines develop notes of honey and nuts as they age, and grapes that have botrytis give those flavors of dried apricot, honey, mango, rye bread that we'll see in most botrytis styles. Hazleveloo is the second most planted grape. It produces wines which is slightly fruitier than ferment and has quite a distinctive aroma of white peach and orange blossom. Mainly supporting role in the blends because it gives that perfume, but it's sometimes made as a variety of wine both dry and sweet. Saga muscatelli or muscat Blanca Puttigron is around nine percent of the region's vines and gives floral notes in blends with both sweet and dry wines. It does also come as a sweet wine occasionally and a dry wine. So let's talk about winemaking and styles. So the dry wines without batritus, this category is gaining importance, and it allows producers to make wine in years where there is not much noble rot. They can vary from very simple, unoaked wine styles, that are made to be drunk young to more age worthy blends, which often fermented and matured in New Oak. They're usually made from ferment. Another style is Takaya Zamorodney, which means as they come, and these wines are made from the grapes that have been harvested as Zammar oddney, and they can be dry, zetas, or sweet, it is. And that depends on the amount of noble rock that's present. By the nature of the harvest, the dry wines will show noble rock characters, and they need to be aged in casts for a minimum of one year and be two years old before they release, so a lot of age much longer. For much of the history of Takai, the dry ones were essentially a by product and produced as we said when botrytis did not develop. Now there's been a significant move towards dry wines in the twenty first century and some very high quality examples are now being produced. Producers are starting to understand the different approach required to produce dry as opposed to sweet wines. So dry wines need healthy grapes with no betritus. So they're planting their new vineyards on higher and windier sites above that fog zone so they don't get the petritis and using more open canopies and vine treatments to prevent rot. Italian wine podcast. Brought to you by mama jumbo shrimp. You can see on the map a good explanation of the Takayas Amarodhini, so it can be dry or sweet depending on the amount of noble rot. It's a Polish word that means as it comes. So it's normally made from whole bunches with varying amounts of healthy and betritos grapes. The sweet style is Edes and the dry style Zaraz and it depends on the level of ripeness and the level of patritos. The sweeter style would be the more common, and the minimum residual sugar levels around forty five grams per liter, though most have bottled at around ninety to a hundred and ten grams. Was a change in the law in two thousand and sixteen, and the wine needs only be aging oak for six months? And as a result, a number of producers are placing greater focus on the category. They see it as a more authentic to Kaiwan than the more recent late harvest style. It's bottled in the same traditional clear five hundred mil to Kai bottle as a zoo, and the best It is once can be of equivalent quality to Azoo, but the star will be slightly fresher. Dry Zamorodney is aged under a thin film of floor yeast. It's much thinner than those sheets they use in Sherry for up to ten years without chopping up. The wine's protected from excessive oxidation, and will develop quite nutty and green apple aromas. The next style we need to really look at is the sweet wines, and that's divided into Azoo. And the production of Azoo starts with a base wine. It's made from healthy grapes. Before during or after fermentation, the berries are macerated in the baseline, and that maceration usually lasts from twelve to sixty hours. When the maceration has taken place in must or fermenting must the juices drained and the aso paste or berries are pressed, the mustard is then fermented or continues to ferment to gain the desired balance of sugar and alcohol. Now some producers use ambient yeast or wild yeast, but others would use cultured yeast because they would see it as being more reliable because of course high sugar levels can make fermentation difficult, both stainless steel tanks and barrels are used. So fermentation may stop naturally, especially the higher sugar levels, and these wines will be naturally stable. However, many producers would stop fermentation by chilling or racking the wine or adding s o two to avoid the risk of refurmentation and to control those house styles. As it winds must be stored for a minimum of eighteen months in oak. Both some producers prefer longer, often hungarian oak. Traditionally wines were matured in the smaller one thirty six liter barrels known as gaunt have a most producers are now switching to larger three hundred to five hundred liter barrels. There's a mixture of new and older oak. They must be bottled in a traditional clear glass to Kye bottle. Until two thousand and thirteen, Azoo was classified by its level of sweetness using the Potonia scale. So this traditionally counted the number of pickers buckets or hogs put any of Azuberries added to a traditional gaunchy barrel of must. But more recently, it's measured by set minimum residual sugar levels with three Potanias having the least sugar and six the most. So in two thousand and thirteen, the regulations changed quite significantly, and the minimum level of residual sugar was increased to a hundred and twenty grams per liter, which was equivalent to the previous minimum for five batonias. So wines with lower levels of sugar are now labeled late harvests, or tokai, it is Zamorogne, depending on how they're made. Azu wines can be labeled as five petonias or six petonias, which is above a hundred and fifty grams residual sugar, but this isn't mandatory. Asensia, this is a style that is extremely rare and very expensive and and very rarely comes outside of the region, and it's wines made from tiny volume of very syrupy free run juice that trickles from azu berries. And it's the fact that they use the free run juice. That makes the difference here. Asensia means essence or nectar. The must is so sweet. It can take years to ferment. And even after that time, the wines are very low in alcohol, usually less than five percent ABV, and the minimum level of residual sugar is four hundred fifty grams per liter. This is so sweet, but it's very, very balanced between the high acidity of the grapes, and that keeps the wines fresh. And of course, they can age for a really long time. These wines are very full bodied often with the consistency of syrup with pronounced highly concentrated flavors. High in a city, they retain their freshness, late harvest style of wines. Recently, it's a bit of a reaction to the amount of time and investment needed to produce and mature azu wines. The late harvest wines have emerged in a similar way to sweet wines found in other wine producing regions. The difference is with late harvest, no maceration. Late harvest wines are produced with a lower proportion of betritos grapes normally than for azu wines. And they tend to be lighter bodied and less concentrated. The legal minimum residual sugar levels only forty five grams per liter, though most would be between ninety and a hundred and ten. Oak aging's not compulsory, and many wines would spend more time in stainless deal rather than being stored in oak because producers want to emphasize the fruit characteristics. The result is that late harvest wines are ready for release much earlier than Azoo, typically between twelve and sixteen months after harvest. When you're thinking about your answer for WSE to level three exam questions, please don't forget Takai. It's something that is very often comes up and students probably don't spend as much time on this section as they should. Think about the production areas. Think about the grape varieties and the timing of harvest and how that influences the style of sweet wines. Know the production methods used for dry wines without botrytis. For Tokyo Zamorodney. Think about the modern suite styles, as well as the Azu, the Asensia. Think about all of those things. And if you have a good understanding of the styles of wines that are made from those grapes, you'll do really well in the short answer question. Thanks for listening to this episode of Italian wine podcast brought to you by Italian wine Academy. 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