Reassuring Stain

‘An argument lasting almost 40 years between Slovakia and Hungary regarding the wine trademark Tokai is coming to an end. The Agriculture Ministers of both countries signed an agreement on June 3 by which Hungary officially recognised that the Tokai vineyard area is also located on Slovak territory…’

[Slovak Spectator, June 2004]

-Gosh, why fight over the placement of a few wine villages? Here is a bottle gifted to me, of ’96 Tokajský Výber (made as the Hungarian version) from Galafruit & Co., South Eastern Slovakia. Persimmon in colour and nose, with dried blood orange discs, walnuts, spun barley sugar, even iodine... On the palate, more sprightly, lightly footed, and dry than any other five (out of six) puttonyos/putňa wine I have encountered. It has a long-lived, reassuring stain of a finish. Maybe a match for thin, restrainedly jam coated pancakes?