'Tokaj - A Companion For The Bibulous Traveller'

"It has been written and designed to be of practical use to wine enthusiasts visiting Tokaj, or those who would simply like to know more about this great wine region."

Forward:

The years since 1989 have seen the gradual revelation of the Hungary that was legend before the World Wars and communism of the last century. Budapest is revealed again as one of Europe’s grandest and most stylish capitals, its people, its arts, its atmosphere and its provisions original, marvelous and vaut le voyage.

Even before Budapest got back on its feet, though, there were stirrings in the remote northeast of the country where a wine long recognized as one of the world’s most desirable had been languishing unloved. Tokaj is as much a feast of Hungary’s national image as Budapest, Bartók, paprika and tempestuous violins.

It was the first, and for centuries among the most expensive, of the world’s great sweet wines, credited with miraculous qualities – aphrodisiac, lifesaver, and the ultimate gift from monarch to monarch. The comparison with Burgundy is inevitable: a rural region and its villages promoted to the world stage by the produce of its fields.

TOKAJ’S YELLOW-PAINTED buildings in country-Baroque could be almost anywhere in Central Europe; its forests and rivers are the essence of the heart of the continent. Yet nowhere else shares its singular climate, the sun and mist of its autumns, the grapes that profit by them, and the miles of rockcut tunnels that form its labyrinthine cellars. Those elements, the Tokaj people, their unique culture, their monuments and their hospitality are the subject of this book.

The reawakening of Tokaj has been an extraordinary phenomenon. Capital has poured in (from France above all), new transport links have brought it to within easy reach of Budapest, fine hotels and restaurants have opened, and in 2002 the whole region was declared a World Heritage Site.

I arrived in Tokaj in 1989. It was cold, hungry and depressed. Eighteen years later it has a spring in its step, and everything to offer the visitor.

David Copp knows the region and its wines well, and his Companion will make your visit doubly."

Foreword by Hugh Johnson OBE
Publication date: 12th November 2007
Publisher: PxB
Book size: 250mm x 145mm
Soft Cover
Pages: 158+4
Illustrations: Full Colour photographs,Maps, Diagrams
Price: HUF 3950

Distributor: JAFFA KIADÓ
Address: Budapest Király utca 16.
Contact: Richard Rados
Telephone: (+36 1) 887 4840; (+36 1) 887 4815