Essencia - Dessert by the Spoonful by Ben Narasin

Were pure gold fermented into wine, the result would be Essencia - a rare, hard-to-find, expensive nectar of exceptional purity and quality. Its name references the most elite classification of Tokaji Aszu, sweet wines whose provenance is the Tokaj region of Hungary. Aszu wines are made from shriveled grapes afflicted by botrytis cinerea, the same noble rot that spawns Sauternes, Bordeaux's signature sweet wine, and other late harvest wines like Germany's Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese.

To collect what is, even from the largest plots, a small yield of grapes, weathered human hands take pass after pass through the vine rows, culling only the most perfectly botrytised berries. Traditionally the botrytised grapes were mashed in a puttony (a wood basket, also known as a hod, into which grapes were collected) holding approximately 25 liters (or 65 gallons), and added to a cask of still dry wine. The more puttonyos added, the sweeter the resulting Aszu, whose sweetness level correlates to a six-tier classification system from the base-line three puttonyos up to the pinnacle Essencia, sometimes known as Esszencia or simply Essence.

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About the Author

Guest contributor Ben Narasin is a San Francisco Bay area-based wine, food, travel and luxury lifestyle writer.

Visit his Web site at www.foodwinelife.com.