Brown Nuggets

Famous Consumers of Tokaji

In 1703, Francis Rákóczi II, Prince of Transylvania, gave King Louis XIV of France from his Tokaj estate Tokaji wines as a gift. The Tokaji wine was served at the French Royal court at Versailles, where it became known as Tokay. Delighted with the precious beverage, Louis XV of France was offering a glas of Tokaji to Madame de Pompadour entitled "Wine of Kings, King of Wines" ("Vinum Regnum, Rex Vinorum"). This famous sentence is used to this day as a marketing device for Tokaji wines.

Emperor Franz Josef had a tradition of sending Queen Victoria as a gift Tokaji Aszú wine every year on her birthday, twelve bottles for each year of her age. By her eighty-first birthday (1900), this totalled an impressive 972 bottles.

Tokaji wine has received accolades from numerous great writers and composers including Beethoven, Liszt, Schubert and Goethe. The composer Joseph Haydn's favorite wine was Tokaji. Besides Louis XIV, several other European monarchs are known to have been keen consumers of the wine. Louis XV and Frederick the Great tried to outdo one another when they treated guests like Voltaire with Tokaji. Napoleon III, the last Emperor of the French, ordered 30–40 barrels of Tokaji at the French Royal Court every year. Gustav III, King of Sweden, loved Tokaji. In Russia, customers included Peter the Great and Empress Elizabeth of Russia. A newspaper account of the 1933 wedding of Polish president Ignacy Mościcki notes that toasts were made with 250-year-old wines, and goes on to say "The wine, if good, could only have been Essence of Tokay, and the centuries-old friendship between Poland and Hungary would seem to support this conclusion."

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

posted by Pocahontas @ 9:51 AM