Wine · Terminology

Eszencia

The free-run juice of botrytised Tokaj berries — sweeter than anything else in wine, and barely fermentable.

Eszencia is the most concentrated wine in the world. It is the free-run juice that seeps out of a vat of botrytised aszú berries under nothing but their own weight — no pressing at all — collected drop by drop before the berries are used to make Tokaji Aszú.

The juice contains 450 g/L of sugar or more, sometimes over 800. At that concentration yeast can barely function: fermentation takes years and rarely gets past 2–3% alcohol. Legally it is often classified as a syrup rather than a wine, and it is traditionally served by the spoon.

In practice

  • Yields are microscopic — a few litres from a whole vineyard's aszú harvest.
  • Fermentation may continue for four to six years, or simply stall.
  • It is used both as a wine in its own right and as a sweetening component in Aszú blends.
  • Bottles are small, and prices are among the highest in wine.

Where you'll meet it

  • Tokaj, Hungary, and nowhere else.
  • Historically, at the courts of Europe — Louis XIV's vinum regum, rex vinorum ("wine of kings, king of wines") referred to the Tokaj wines, and Eszencia was their apex.
  • As the theoretical ceiling of the sweet-wine world, above even Trockenbeerenauslese.

The sweetness scale, from the top

Wine Residual sugar
Eszencia 450–900 g/L
Trockenbeerenauslese 200–400 g/L
Tokaji Aszú (6 puttonyos historically) 150–200 g/L
Sauternes 90–150 g/L
Beerenauslese 90–180 g/L
Auslese 45–100 g/L

To put 800 g/L in perspective: that is close to eight times the sugar of a standard cola, and roughly a quarter of the liquid's mass.

Tasting it

Eszencia is not a wine you drink so much as taste: a spoonful of intense apricot, honey, orange peel and dried fig, held up by acidity so high it prevents the whole thing from being sickly. The finish runs for minutes.

Its keeping potential is effectively unlimited — the sugar and acid make it microbiologically inert, and bottles from the 19th century survive in Tokaj's cellars.

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