#puttonyos

Over the years I have avoided sweet wines.  I once tried one which tasted so much like venos cough mixture that it almost put me off the whole idea for life.  However, week 3 of the WSET Course requires me to try it and instead of the traditional Sauternes I thought I would go for the Hungarian Tokaji - thoroughly scrummy!

Producer: Royal Tokaji Zrt

Region: Hungary

Vintage: 2007

Cost: £11.20 (250 ml)

Grape Variety: Tokaji (5 Puttonyos Aszu)

As an aside Puttonyos are indicators of sweetness in wine specific to the Tokaji.  The sweetest is 6 puttonyos but apparently even a 3 is sweet enough

Appearance: Clear Deep Gold

Nose: Clean, Medium, Stone Fruit (Apricot and then Peach) hints of jam and preserved fruits

Palate: Sweet, low acidity, full bodied, long length.  Tastes firstly of Dried Apricot then of Yellow plums with a sweet jammy quality.  There is a aftertaste of kernels (for me it was like the kernel of an apricot. my dad always cracked the nut and then put in the jam afterwards for flavour).

I drank this with a Lemon Posset and it found it went very well with the sharpness of the lemon and the jamminess of the wine complimented the sweetness of the pudding.

Honestly it was like drinking an alcoholic liquid jam without all the stickiness!

I did not do the cheese and apple test. But given it worked with the sharpness of the lemon posset (in my opinion) I think it works well with acidity.

Laura Turner Garrison, Editor, Lot18

This week I decided to keep things simple with a recipe for simple syrup -- with wine, of course. The great thing about “wine syrup” -- I’ll spare you the puns this time around -- is its incredible versatility.  You can drench your Saturday morning waffles in this liquid confection, drizzle it on your ice cream or sweeten up your coffee.  And while eating it may be the best part, preparing the syrup is a breeze too. Using some of your wine collection is a win-win situation – so let’s get to it already!

With so  many recipes recycling left over reds and whites are floating around the interwebs, there’s really never an excuse to waste a drop of wine. But since I stepped into the kitchen with the intention to make me some good syrup, I decided to experiment with a bottle of dessert wine. Don’t worry, I opened the bottle before I started cooking – glass is definitely not part of the ingredient list (this time).

Fortunately, what I had wasn’t just any sweet wine, but 2004 Dobogó Mylitta Tokaji. Tokaji refers to the name of wines grown in the Tokaj-Hegyalja region in Hungary and Slovakia, and the most famous ones are quite sweet. But how sweet are they? Well, a distinct measurement was actually created to denote that sweetness. It’s called “puttonyos” and they go from three to six, increasing in sugar level with each number. Be still, my sweet tooth.

The particular wine I was working tasted of sweet fruits, citrus and general heaven, all of which I used to inform which additional ingredients I would include in the syrup. Simple syrup can be as basic as sugar and water: boiled, simmered, cooled, enjoyed. But when you add wine to the mix, you may as well add a few more more flavors.

For my version of wine syrup, I adapted a recipe from Real Simple magazine. I chose to supplement my sweet wine with sugar, vanilla extract, shredded ginger and a dash of cinnamon. The difficulty of prep work from here is really up to you. Blame it on a lazy Sunday, but I chose medium.

First, I cut a small knob of ginger and shredded it – about ½ a teaspoon total. Next, I poured two cups of the Tokaji wine and 2/3 cup of sugar into a medium saucepan. To this I added ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract – but if you want to kick it up a bit, you can also take a vanilla bean pod, scrape out the inside and put the inside grinds and the bean into the mix. Delicious, I’m sure, but extract just felt right (read: easier) this time.

After the vanilla, I added that ½ teaspoon of ginger I was all about a few paragraphs back. Last, I sprinkled a dash of cinnamon over the mix. You know, for fun! Give the mixture a little stir, put it on your stove top and set the heat to high. Then you wait…for three or four minutes. Once the concoction boils, turn the heat down and let it simmer for about 40 minutes until it thickens and reduces to about a cup.    

Last step -- yes, that’s right, we’re already at the last step -- is pour it into a container and let it cool in the fridge for a few hours. The syrup will apparently thicken when cool. Makes sense, and far be it from me to argue with sense.

I ended up with a sweet amber-colored syrup ready to drizzle and dab. For the inaugural run, I poured it all over a bowl of plain Greek yogurt and convinced myself the snack was still healthy. Healthy or not, it was sweet in every sense of the word.