Terroir 1996 banner
IVES 9 IVES Conference Series 9 Tokaj zonation, traditions and future prospects

Tokaj zonation, traditions and future prospects

Abstract

  1. Les traditions
    La superficie actuelle de l’ensemble des vignobles est de 5.293 ha qui est repartie dans 27 communes (données officielles du Conseil National des Communes de montagnes). L’histoire du vignoble remonte aux années 1550. Le premier vin d’aszu a été élaboré en 1650. Les premières lois concernant la production ont été mises en vigueur en 1737. La première classification des vignobles a été effectuée en 1772.
  2. Les conditions écologiques
    Le climat de la région de Tokaj est continental avec une température moyenne de 10,5 oC et une pluviométrie de 550 mm par ans. Le microclimat spécial est conditionné par les coteaux du Sud en forme de V de la montagne de Zemplén. Ces reliefs protègent aussi les vignes contre les vents froids de l’Est. Les facteurs très importants sont encore les rivières aux pieds de la montagne, notamment la Tisza (la Theiss) et la Bodrog, qui assurent une partie de l’humidité pour la pourriture noble causée par le Botrytis cinerea. Les sols de la région sont composés de sols volcaniques et sédimenteux.
  3. Les produits
    A Tokaj on peut caractériser trois types des produits:
    • Les vins de cépage sont vinifiés avec les grappes saines.
    • Le szamorodni (mot d’origine polonaise: “comme il est né”) est obtenu à partir de grappes saines et botrytisées (grains d’aszu) récoltées et vinifiées ensemble. On peut en produire deux type de vin : sec et doux.
    • L’aszu est un vin doux naturel, pour lequel les grains d’aszu sont récoltés séparément. Puis on ajoute le raisin botrytisé ainsi obtenu au vin de base ou au moût, et la vinification se fait ensemble. Les catégories d’aszu sont classées selon la mesure traditionnelle, par les nombres de “puttony” (la hotte) de 3 à 6 et pour la qualité supérieure on utilise encore la catégorie “d’aszu esszencia“. Les catégories sont définies selon la teneur en sucre résiduel.
  4. Les variétés
    Aujourd’hui on cultive quatre cépages dans la région, mais à l’époque on a eu de 20 à 30 variétés différentes, parmi eux, un cépage, le Kôvérszolo (“Grappe grosse”) est repris maintenant pour réévaluation. Les cépages principaux sont le Furmint et le Harslevelu (“Feuille de tilleul”) et en plus le Sarga muskotaly (Muscat de Lunel) et le Zéta (une nouvelle variété) qui sont les seuls cépages autorisés. Ce dernier n’est cultivé que depuis deux décennies, tandis que les autres sont les cépages traditionnels de la région.
  5. La classification
    La classification actuelle des terroirs a été réalisée en 1981. La base de ce cadastrage est une évaluation les facteurs écologiques sur 400 points.
  6. Les développements actuels
    La plupart des domaines vitivinicoles produisent des vins sélectionnés par lieu-dits (terroirs). Les lieux-dits et leurs dénominations sont devenus plus en plus un facteur de marché. Mais en matière de l’appellation il faut encore bien clarifier la législation. Au niveau international actuellement la question la plus difficile est de trouver une solution pour le problème de la production des vins sous le nom de Tokaj en Slovaquie.

  1. History and traditions
    The recent surface of the limited vineyard area of Tokaj wine district is 5.293 ha of 27 communes. The wine history goes back to 1550, the first aszu wine was produced in 1650. The first regulation was implemented in 1737-ben and the vineyard-site classification was carried out in 1772 first time.
  2. Ecologie potential
    In Tokaj district the continental climate is dominant, average temperature is 10,5 °C, the rainfall as much as 550 mm/year for long term. The special microclimate is originated in the Zemplém mountains situated like “V” and its slope facing south and soutlreast protecting vineyards from cool coming from Ukraine, over Carpathian mountains. Basic factors are the rivers flowing at the feet of mountains, called Tisza and Bodrog providing the necessary humidity for Botrytis. Volcanic and sediment soils vary.
  3. Wines
    In Tokaj the wine are also classified, there are three basic ones such as follows:
    a. Varietal wines produced from healthy grapes.
    b. Szamorodni (means “as it was bom ”). Healthy and Botritys infected grapes picked together and processed together for dry or sweet ones.
    c. Aszu. Sweet wines, Botritys infected berries are selected and put onto base wine or must. According to their sugar rate it may be 3-6 puttonyos, or aszu-essencia aged in barrel.
  4. Grape-vine varieties
    Nowadays there are four grape-vine varieties cultivated but there was time listed 20-30 ones including now again tested promising Kovér. Furmint and Hârslevelu are main varieties, Y ellow Muscat and Zéta are complementary ones. The last one registered only in 80s.
  5. Classification
    The recent running vineyard-site classification was set up in 1981. Clustering is based on ecologic investigation of 18 ecological factors resulted in 400 mark system.
  6. Recent developments
    Now the most wineries produce vineyard-site selected wines. These appellations have become important marketing factors. The legal and technical backgrounds need to be further investigations. At the international stage the Slovakian Tokaj issue seems to be the most difficult to achieve agreement.

DOI:

Publication date: February 16, 2022

Issue: Terroir 2002

Type: Article

Authors

Dr. Erno Péter BOTOS (1), András BACSÓ (2)

(1) General Director, Research Institute for Vine and Wine, H-Kecskemét
(2) Manager, Oremus Estate, H-Tolcsva

Tags

IVES Conference Series | Terroir 2002

Citation

Related articles…

Permanent cover cropping with reduced tillage increased resiliency of wine grape vineyards to climate change

Majority of California’s vineyards rely on supplemental irrigation to overcome abiotic stressors. In the context of climate change, increases in growing season temperatures and crop evapotranspiration pose a risk to adaptation of viticulture to climate change. Vineyard cover crops may mitigate soil erosion and preserve water resources; but there is a lack of information on how they contribute to vineyard resiliency under tillage systems. The aim of this study was to identify the optimum combination of cover crop sand tillage without adversely affecting productivity while preserving plant water status. Two experiments in two contrasting climatic regions were conducted with two cover crops, including a permanent short stature grass (P. bulbosa hybrid), barley (Hordeum spp), and resident vegetation under till vs. no-till systems in a Ruby Cabernet (V. vinifera spp.) (Fresno) and a Cabernet Sauvingon (Napa) vineyard. Results indicated that permanent grass under no-till preserved plant available water until E-L stage 17. Consequently, net carbon assimilation of the permanent grass under no-till system was enhanced compared to those with barley and resident vegetation. On the other hand, the barley under no-till system reduced grapevine net carbon assimilation during berry ripening that led to lower content of nonstructural carbohydrates in shoots at dormancy. Components of yield and berry composition including flavonoid profile at either site were not adversely affected by factors studied. Switching to a permanent cover crop under a no-till system also provided a 9% and 3% benefit in cultural practices costs in Fresno and Napa, respectively. The results of this work provides fundamental information to growers in preserving resiliency of vineyard systems in hot and warm climate regions under context of climate change.

Climate, Viticulture, and Wine … my how things have changed!

The planet is warmer than at any time in our recorded past and increasing greenhouse emissions and persistence in the climate system means that continued warming is highly likely. Climate change has already altered the basic framework of growing grapes for wine production worldwide and will likely continue to do so for years to come. The wine sector can continue to play an important role in leading the agricultural sector in addressing climate change. From developing on…

VINIoT – Precision viticulture service

The project VINIoT pursues the creation of a new technological vineyard monitoring service, which will allow companies in the wine sector in the SUDOE space to monitor plantations in real time and remotely at various levels of precision. The system is based on spectral images and an IoT architecture that allows assessing parameters of interest viticulture and the collection of data at a precise scale (level of grape, plant, plot or vineyard) will be designed. In France, three subjects were specifically developed: evaluation of maturity, of water stress, and detection of flavescence dorée. For the evaluation of maturity, it has been decided first to work at the berry scale in the laboratory, then at the bunch scale and finally in the vineyard. The acquisition of the spectral hyperstal image as well as the reference analyzes to measure the maturity, were carried out in the laboratory after harvesting the berries in a maturity monitoring context. This work focuses on a case study to predict sugar content of three different grape varieties: Syrah, Fer Servadou and Mauzac. A robust method called Roboost-PLSR, developed in the framework of this work (Courand et al., 2022), to improve prediction model performance was applied on spectra after the acquirement of hyperspectral images. Regarding the evaluation of water stress, to work with a significant variability in terms of water status, it has been worked first with potted plants under 2 different water regimes. The facilities have allowed the supervision of irrigation and micro-climatic conditions. The regression models on agronomic variables (stomatal conductance, water potential, …) are studied. To detect flavescence dorée, the experimental plan has consisted of work at leaf scale in the laboratory first, and then in the field. To detect the disease from hyper-spectral imaging, a combination of multivariate curve resolution-alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) and factorial discriminant analysis (FDA) was proposed. This strategy proved the potential towards the discrimination of healthy and infected leaves by flavescence dorée based on the use of hyperspectral images (Mas Garcia et al., 2021).

A predictive model of spatial Eca variability in the vineyard to support the monitoring of plant status

[lwp_divi_breadcrumbs home_text="IVES" use_before_icon="on" before_icon="||divi||400" module_id="publication-ariane" _builder_version="4.19.4" _module_preset="default" module_text_align="center" module_font_size="16px" text_orientation="center"...

The plantation frame as a measure of adaptation to climate change

The mechanization of vineyard work originally led to a reduction in planting densities due to the lack of machinery adapted to the vineyard. The current availability of specific machinery makes it possible to establish higher planting densities. In this work, three planting densities (1.40×0.80 m, 1.80×1 m and 2.20×1.20 m, corresponding to 8928, 5555 and 3787 plants/ha respectively) were studied with four varieties autochthonous of Galicia (northwestern Spain): Albariño and Treixadura (white), Sousón and Mencía (red). The vines were trained in a vertical shoot positioning system using a single Royat cordon, and pruned to spurs with two buds each. Agronomic data (yield, pruning wood weight, Ravaz index) and oenological data in must were collected. The higher planting density (1.40×0.80 m) had no significant effect on grape yield per vine in white varieties, although production per hectare was much higher due to the greater number of plants. In red varieties, this planting density resulted in a significantly lower production per vine, compensated by the greater number of plants. In addition, it significantly reduced the Brix degree in the must of the Albariño, Treixadura and Sousón varieties, and increased the total acidity in the latter two and Mencía. It also caused an increase in extractable and total anthocyanins and IPT in red grapes. The effects of high planting density on grapes are of great interest for the adaptation of varieties in the context of climate change. In the future, it could be advisable to modify the limits imposed by the appellations of origin on the planting density of these varieties in order to obtain more balanced wines.