THE HISTORY OF THE WINE REGION
Tokaj-Hegyalja (Tokaj Wine Region), located in the north-eastern part of Hungary on the southern hills of the Zemplén Mountains by the swamp lands of the River Bodrog, has become world famous for its viti- and viniculture. The double name of Tokaj-Hegyalja, i.e. Tokaj Foothills, is a fitting one since the region lies on the boundary between Upper Hungary (Felvidék) and the Great Plain (Alföld). The name Tokaj is no coincidence since this is the most important crossing point over the River Tisza.
The most ancient relic of the wine region is the ten-million-year-old grape find from Erdőbénye, and the mammoth find discovered in Tarcal, which indicate that the area was inhabited in prehistoric times. The fisher-hunter-gatherer people who lived here in the New Stone Age, i.e. around 5500 BC, were replaced on the Great Plain by the Linear Pottery culture, whose people already cultivated land. It was they who began to mine the treasure of Zemplén, obsidian, from which they fashioned stone blades.
Traces of the settlement preserving the culture of Hatvan, dating from the Middle Bronze Age (1700-1300 BC), can still be discerned on Dereszla Hill in Bodrogkeresztúr. It is likely that the Sarmatians, who ruled the Great Plain until the 420s AD, carved out a strip of grassland near Tokaj during their constant struggle with Germanic tribes. Tokaj played an important strategic role even in this period since one of the country’s most important trading routes, which had also been used by the Romans, passed right through it. Forming part of the legacy of the Gepids is a grave in Mád for a woman of the Hun tribe containing beautiful objects. The presence of the Avars, who ruled over the Gepids from 567 AD, is demonstrated by a grey vessel decorated with wavy lines that was unearthed in the Király (King) Slope in Tokaj.
It is almost certain that there was already a flourishing viticulture in this region before the Hungarian Conquest, in the form of floodplain (tree-planted) grape cultivation, which was the norm at the time. Since there are words of ancient Turkish origin in Hungarian related to wine and grapes, it can be reasonably supposed that the ancestors of modern Hungarians were already familiar with winemaking prior to the Conquest. The most significant find of this era is the equestrian grave of a high-ranking warrior, a Magyar leader in Tarcal, which contained hundreds of silver belts and decorative harnesses for horses, as well as a beautiful, gilded silver sabretache plate.
The precinct of Zemplén County had been established by the 11th century and two-thirds of it was in royal hands by the 12th century. Up until the 19th century more and more land came into the possession of noble families. King Béla IV brought Italians from the region of Venice and Walloons from France to the country to (re)plant the vineyards that had been devastated and destroyed by the Tatars between 1241 and 1252. The new arrivals settled in the regions of Olaszliszka, Bodrogolaszi, Tállya and Sárospatak. The large-scale grape plantations dating back to the 14th century were developed by the Italians who came to the region in the 14th century, as was the urban character of the settlement.
The wine production of the Carpathian Basin changed much during the reign of Matthias Corvinus, thanks to his close ties with the Italians. Raisin wine came onto the scene and Italian textbooks on agriculture exerted a significant influence on the development of viticulture. As a result, the vegetation period of the grapes was extended and the ripening period pushed forward, so it is quite conceivable that the process of botrytisation was already known and understood at that time. During the Turkish conquest the Tokaj Foothills grew in importance as it remained the only wine region that could be cultivated under relatively peaceful circumstances. Many of the Szerémség region’s grape growers moved here, including the powerful Garai family, to whom we owe the first written record, dated from 1571, of the Tokaji aszú. Records confirm that at that time, wine from Tokaj was already gracing the tables of ecclesiastical and secular dignitaries all over Europe.
The golden age of the region began in the 16th century with commercial and banking capital flowing into a highly profitable winemaking industry, which required a high level of expertise. This development was fostered by the appearance of the Rákóczi family as well as by the diverse types of estates that could be found here: royal estates, Transylvanian princely estates as well as estates owned by the noblemen of Transylvania, Upper Hungary and even Transdanubia, and the estates of the wealthy towns of Upper Hungary.
The Reformation appeared in the region with almost overwhelming force. Following the establishment of the Sárospatak College in 1531 Protestant schools in the surrounding market towns were opened one after the next. The construction of the most significant buildings that have survived to this day also began in the late 16th century. It was then that the oppidum, i.e. market town, a particular kind of Hungarian settlement, became dominant here. This type of settlement formed a transition between the civitas, i.e. free royal cities inhabited chiefly by citizens and nobles, and the possessio, i.e. villages populated by serfs and cottars villages and under the authority of landowners. These settlements were granted legal, economic, social, cultural and ecclesiastical privileges. They had the right to hold markets and to inherit and own left-over land, thus bestowing ranks upon the inhabitants regardless of their social status. This resulted in the development of civic thinking and the maintenance of high standards coupled with a high quality of equipment, which were forced to an end when the decree of 1876 relegating the market towns the status of a village was passed.
This situation was exacerbated by national laws stating that vineyards did not belong to the body of estates and, similarly to cleared lands, they were regarded as the results of the efforts and industry of serfs. Hence, vineyards could be freely inherited and sold not only in transactions between serfs but also between serfs and nobles, as well as between serfs and citizens. The vineyard owners formed a community (Hegyközség) separate from the inhabitants of the wine region’s settlements with the original inhabitants and those settling here from other areas – serfs, nobles and the middle-class – enjoying the same rights and obligations. The community’s elected officials took care of the grassy strip and the hedges surrounding the vineyards, and maintained the gates, drainage ditches, and retaining walls in good order. In customary law pertaining to market towns, all manner of legal procedures related to vineyard hills and vineyard estates were regulated in precise detail, including, for example, the date of the beginning of the harvest, which was changed from 10 October to 28 October at that time.
In the 1630s Máté Szepsi Laczkó - a priest from Erdőbénye, who had been (erroneously) bestowed the title of the first maker of the aszú wine - accurately described the rules of making aszú wine. In 1655 the Diet of Hungary passed a decree to regulate the picking out of the aszú grapes one by one.
Following the economic boom Swabian settlers, Slovak, Ruthenian and Polish vineyard workers, as well as Greek and Armenian traders arrived in the 18th century, and then Jewish refugees from Galicia in the early 19th century. These peoples brought their own cultures and religions with them, which created a very interesting environment.
It was at this time that the delimitation of wine regions and vineyard classifications, which up to then had been considered unique throughout Europe, were introduced: in 1737 a royal charter listed the settlements within the boundaries of which grapes suitable for the production of ‘Tokaji wine’ could be grown. The names of the vineyard-covered slopes (dűlő) and the exact size of their area planted with grapes were already included in the state registers of 1765 and 1772.
However, the 19th century brought little good to the wine region. The partition of Poland in 1795 ended one of the most important foreign markets for Tokaji wine, and from 1875 phylloxera (an insect pest) destroyed most of the grapevines within just a few years. The urban development law of 1876 reclassified most of the market towns as villages. Moreover, according to the Trianon decision of 1920, 72% of the county’s territory was annexed to Czechoslovakia, while Transylvania was also ripped away from Hungary.
The decline continued with the eradication of the Jews in the area until 1945, followed by that of the aristocracy and the better-off middle peasantry. This deprived the region of the best-trained and qualified people in wine production and trade. By 1960 most of the vineyards were owned by the state or cooperatives and only 11 percent remained in the hands of the original owners. Production was carried out at the Tokajhegyaljai Állami Gazdasági Borkombinát (State Wine Factory of the Cooperative of Tokajhegyalja), where quantity was prioritised over quality.
After the change in the political system in Hungary the lack of domestic capital naturally led to the appearance of foreign investors, who were aware of the value of Tokaji wine. The local specialists, who helped them settle, founded their own artisan wineries around the turn of the millennium. Together with the reconstruction of the viti- and viniculture, the professional and architectural development of the area ensued. In 2004 the Tokaj-Hegyalja wine region became part of the World Heritage as a historic cultural landscape, with nine of its settlements forming the core area and the rest their protection zone.
Gábor Erhardt
Introduction from the book TOKAJ, the architecture of the wine region, 2022.
https://orszagepito.net/konyvek/16173/
