The two leading grape varieties, furmint and hárslevelű, have their genetic origin in Tokaj and seem to be related. Both varieties tend to produce dry wines worth ageing based on acidity, tension, body, and balance.
For centuries, the two main categories of Tokaj were szűrt bor (filtered wine) and csinált bor (made wine). The former were wines made much the same way as most wine is made today, by simply pressing the grapes and fermenting the must. The latter were wines produced by the more complicated Aszú process. Clearly distinct from this noble sweet category was the typically dry ordinarium. Even in the old days, a distinction was made between free-run juice and press juice, although they were not necessarily handled separately. Főbor (principal wine) was the old name of Szamorodni-style wine, at least insofar as it was made by pressing the harvested fruit as is, without separating botrytized berries from grapes unaffected by noble rot. From 1707 onward, Eszencia, the highest grade of Tokaj, was also increasingly referred to as legfőbb bor, meaning ‘supreme wine’ (legfőbb is the superlative of the adjective fő).
