10 December: Tokaji Aszú Day

As we reported yesterday, a Sweet Tokaj campaign is taking place in the United Kingdom among others with a Decanter Tokaj supplement and with Tokaji Aszú inspired dishes in 10 great restaurants throughout the country.

God bless the acidity and the extract!

Kemal Demirasal, chef and owner of The Counter (London W10) paired Zsirai 6 puttonyos Tokaji Aszú 2019 with lamb tartare with bulgur wheat, spices and pomegranate molasses.
‘Lamb is naturally high in fat,’ Demirasal points out, ‘but it’s cut by the acidity of the Tokaji. It’s almost as if the sweetness of the wine recedes into the background and its spiciness comes to the fore. ‘The other thing about Tokaji,’ he adds, ‘is that it is a wine with one of the highest levels of dry extract, and that’s one of the things that helps to make it an ideal wine to pair with foods that have an inherent richness.‘The presence of that extract in the wine lends it texture and body, allowing it to stand up to the weight of the dish, while the spicy notes in the wine chime with the gentle warmth of the spices in the tartare.’ The final element that helps to pull the marriage of wine and food together is the pomegranate molasses, whose sugary sharpness echoes the balance of sweet and sour in the wine itself.
Excerpt from Decanter magazine, interview by Natasha Hughes MW

Zsirai Tokaji Aszú is available for £38.95/50cl at Slurp.

Imported by Jascots.