Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine

By Jancis Robinson

Published 2006

  • About

Tokaj, town, pdo (Oltalom alatt álló eredet megjelöléssel or OEM in the local language), and the most famous wine region in hungary, whose sweet wine was once revered throughout Europe. Mount Tokaj is the prominent volcanic cone at the southernmost tip of the region, which includes the foothills of the entire Zemplén Mountains (which, in turn, form the southern range of the Tokaj-Eperjes Mountains). Hungarians often use the name Tokaj to mean the whole region, but the people living in the area refer to themselves as being from the Hegyalja, to emphasize their separateness from the residents of the town of Tokaj itself. However, even they prefer to call their wine Tokaji (the –i ending is a suffix indicating place of origin, as the –er in New Yorker) regardless of any more precise location within the region.