A puttonyio is a Hungarian hod.  Puttonyios means not “hods” but “hodded”.  So a 5 Puttonyios Aszu is a five-hodded Aszu.  I trust that makes everything clear.  It doesn’t?   Let me try again.  Aszu (pronounced rather like a sneeze) is Hungarian for “dried out” or “shrivelled.”  The word refers to grapes affected by botrytis, the “noble rot” that produces the world’s finest sweet wines.  A Tokaji Aszu is therefore a sweet Tokaji made from noble rot grapes, as opposed to a dry Tokaji (they do exist) or a sweet Tokaji made by some other method (they exist too, apparently). Read the rest of this entry »