Tokaj lies in the foothills of the Zemplén mountains where the Bodrog meets the Tisza. Autumn mists from the rivers favour noble rot and aszú, the botrytised berries behind the region's sweet wines. A royal decree of 1737 fixed the boundaries of the district, and in 2002 its historic landscape was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage.
From the eighteenth century the Tokaj trade was closely tied to Jewish merchants. Mád became an important trading centre, and Ber of Bolechów left memoirs, written in the 1790s, of buying Tokaj wine for Galicia and Poland. Families such as the Zimmermans owned dozens of cellars and vineyards before the Holocaust destroyed that world.
Today dry Furmint takes a growing share alongside classic aszú. For kosher production the region is a reminder that sweet wine suited ritual use and long transport well before modern dry kosher wine existed.
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