Tokaj, botrytis, great vintage

Though the 2024 harvest is over, the official harvest report of Hungary has not been released yet. Fortunately, some wineries are happy to share their harvest experiences, so here is the first one with Béres Vineyards from Tokaj.

Some vineyards of the world are lucky enough to be located in a zone where grapes ripen twice a year. Hungary does not belong to these places, yet some winemakers of ours experience the double harvest, what is more, they have to do the two pickings within two months – as it happened in Tokaj at Béres Vineyards this year. The harvest began on 22 August and ended on 25 October.

What was the best of this year’s harvest?

As János Jarecsni estate manager and chief winemaker explained, they started with Hárslevelű for their method traditional sparkling wines. They had known in advance that the harvest would start early, just like in 2018. “Since we planned to vinify the majority of our production dry, the first three weeks were very intense. I believe that we made good decision when deciding the harvest dates. Most of the work had already been done by the time the heavy rains arrived in the middle of September.” And they started waiting for the best, hoping for a great Aszú vintage.

Attila Götz vineyard manager added that it had been nice working in the vineyard due to the lovely, sunny weather, and he also mentions the team of pickers: “we could work with the same people during the whole harvest period, perhaps this year was the most relaxed in this aspect”.

Challenges and joys of the vintage 

“It was hard to be patient hope for botrytis. We were over the harvest of grapes for dry wines, but we needed the botrytised grapes to appear for our late harvest, Szamorodni and Tokaji Aszú wines.” – commented the chief winemaker. Finally, in the second half of October the miraculous botrytised berries arrived!
The chief winemaker is satisfied with the wines ageing in the cellar. The fruity, reductive wines are excellent – both the still and sparkling wines, and they could make the 2024 vintage of their iconic single vineyard wines: Omlás Furmint and Lőcse Furmint.
There is a Hárslevelű parcel (planted in 2021) in Lőcse vineyard, which has just turned into production. The virgin vintage will be vinified as a lovely late harvest sweet wine.
“I am curious and absolutely positive about the Tokaji Aszú 2024. Just like in 2017, it was made of 100% Furmint.”
Attila, the vineyard manager is happy to speak about “his own barrel”. “There was a barrel with fermenting Furmint. After several samplings it still proved to be the best, so the colleagues wrote a note on it saying: “The Vineyard Manager’s Barrel”. Since then, it has been transferred to the cellar, the note is still on it, I still taste it often, and it is still the best! I hope that it will show its best at the final selection.”

Conclusions?

The vineyard manager explained that the year 2024 was difficult and there was a constant threat of mildew. The protection of the plants had special importance this year. The chief winemaker was sort of worried about low acidity and too fast ripening, as it can happen in extremely hot and dry vintages. This is why they decided to start harvesting early and they did not regret it at all. “We kept analysing the mock-harvest results, and we did start harvesting early to avoid extremely elevated must grades and to preserve the crispy acidity of the wines. Regarding quantity, we are somewhat behind the expectations, but quality-wise we consider it a really good vintage.”

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