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100 Punkte Wine Enthusiast
99 Punkte Vinous (Neal Martin)
99 Punkte James Suckling
98 Punkte Wines & Spirits

"Wine does not get more concentrated, dense and viscous than this Tokaji Essencia, but alongside the unctuous sweetness, it also has extraordinary freshness. The fruit aromas range from blood to quince jelly, but there’s also a slew of spices and notes of flowers and forest honey. Although it barely has 2% alcohol, it is much more vinous than that figure suggests. Titanic brulee character at the huge finish."
99 Punkte
James Suckling

"Hail, hail the wonderment of Essencia! Drop-by-drop, by mere pressure of gravity alone upon heavily-botrytised aszú grapes, a dribble of ultra-sweet, unctuous nectar so extreme that it challenges the definition of wine ekes out. Despite the absurd level of sugar (details below), the wine dances on the tongue thanks to its phenomenally high acidity: a pachyderm pirouetting on a high wire. The Royal Tokaji Company is soon releasing their 2009 Tokaji Essencia. It is the company’s eighth release, following in the footsteps of 1993, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2008. This bottle of Essencia was tasted over a 48-hour period. In fact, it went on a “mini-tour” so that I could share it with anyone I encountered in that period: my brother in Chiswick and my cousin down in Brighton, my next-door-neighbour and a dozen or so attendees at a La Paulée-style Burgundy lunch. One confessed that they thought they would never have the chance to taste this fabled wine.
I recently spoke with Royal Tokaji’s winemaker Zoltán Kovács. “It was an extreme vintage in two phases,” he told me. “Budding was perfect. Then there was a drought that lasted until mid-May. There was only 200mm of rain in the first five months. We picked the first generation fruit from the end of September - the humidity was perfect. But there was a very small window to pick as the weather turned rainy from 10 October. It is 100% pure Furmint. The wine fermented over eight years with another five years’ ageing in bottle. It has 1.8% alcohol [2% on the label], 581.3g/L residual sugar and 11.8g/L total acidity.”
The 2009 Tokaji Essencia comes in 1,386 individual red lacquer hand-crafted boxes containing a 375ml bottle and an obligatory hand-blown glass spoon, which is not there for decorative purposes. It does enhance imbibement, allowing that enormous hit of sucrosity to land straight on the tongue instead of clinging to the sides of your mouth or gums. It has a surprisingly bashful nose for the first 12 hours. Whereas some burst from the glass, this chooses to unfurl and only as if toying with you, gradually reveals scents of fresh fig, Medjool dates, Seville orange marmalade and Clementines. I notice that the aromatics blossom on the second day as it deftly slips into fifth gear. The palate also meliorates, obviously unctuous and yet paradoxically weightless thanks to that acidity. Again, fig features prominently allied with marmalade, demerara and quince, more desiccated orange peel and syrup towards the harmonious finish. Wonderful precision throughout, this magnificent Essencia that will outlast you and I."
99 Punkte
Vinous (Neal Martin)

"First off, the texture is like nothing else in this world. The free-run juice of selected aszu berries, allowed to ferment with ambient yeasts to reach 1.8 abv, this is close to honey in texture, but not in any way cloying, just overpowering in its richness. Then the complexity of the flavors comes on, with floral apricot and fruity wild mushroom tones, “like being in the woods after rain,” as Corey Warren described it. Intense, complex, and lasting, this is crazy rich in its power and grace."
98 Punkte
Wines & Spirits (Josh Greene)