Hugh Johnson – ‘Once in a while I stand among the vines and think “this is special”’

I’ve been visiting vineyards for decades now; long enough to have had moments of ennui. Another row of vines: are they in good shape, how are they trellised/ pruned, do they use cover crops, herbicides? It’s all interesting – up to the umpteenth time. then, once in a while, I stand among the vines and think, ‘this is special’.

The landscape can do it, on a Douro terrace or crazy Mosel cat-slide of a site. the atmosphere, the weather, the view… but most often it’s the company. Last summer I bumped around the fields of Mád with István Szepsi in his battered van, stopping every few yards to hop out and examine the soil. I know: you can take soil or leave it. You remember the giant pebbles of Châteauneuf, the arid gravel of Haut-Brion. slate is dark and absorbs rain; limestone is pale. but what’s in the glass grabs you more.Szepsi would change your mind. every clod has a message for him, and you feel his eyes can bore down 10 metres to where the roots are feeding. The story of his soil is what really gets him going. You pick up a brick-sized rock; it weighs like lead. You look closely: it is made up of scores of smaller stones of different colours. It is the work, says Szepsi, of volcanoes aeons ago, geysers that pulverised older layers of rock and boiled them into this stone stew. In his enthusiasm he becomes a human geyser.Szepsi is testing every metre of his scattered vineyards, mainly in the commune of Mád. The Tokaj foothills (Hegyalja in Magyar) resemble the Côte d’Or; an incline, sometimes gradual, sometimes steep, from the plain to the oak-forests where the vines stop. Burgundy celebrates its climats, defined over many centuries of cultivation, in use for so long that they are beyond challenge. The Hegyalja has its dulos, on the face of it a similar idea; but far bigger and with no real consensus on what to look for or expect in their wines. Tokaj, in fact, used to resemble Bordeaux more than Burgundy. Its larger proprietors sold their wines as brands, just as Bordeaux châteaux do.

The past 20 years have seen site-consciousness take over. top wines now have vineyard names – in more and more detail. It may be getting ahead of its customers: are they up to distinguishing Nyúlászó from Király? But it’s part of a worldwide trend. the more we know, the more we want to know.