Hungarian winemaker Zoltan Kovacs from the Tokaj region, famous for its golden dessert wine, sells fine wine at a price of $ 40,000 per bottle, hoping to revive the royal heritage of wine revered by kings and connoisseurs.
In the volcanic region of Tokaj in northeastern Hungary, wine is produced from grapes with "noble rot" caused by the fungus "Botrytis", which dries grapes and concentrates its sugar.
The first literary references to Tokaji Aszu wine date back to 1576. It is said that Louis XIV himself, the French king and the "King of the Sun", described this wine as "the wine of kings and the king of wines." Winemaker Royal Tokaji says the $ 40,000 edition isn’t the most expensive wine in the world. Other rarities may be more expensive at auction.
This bottle of wine is a 1.5-liter hand-blown magnum with a special cork made in Portugal after laser scanning of the neck. The bottle is located in a varnished black box, which, when the button is pressed, illuminates the bottle through and through. A longer storage period adds shades of green tea and rosehip to the aroma.
Only 18 bottles are offered for sale, and with the prospect of an increase in value, the wine will ripen in a bottle for decades or longer. The first buyer did not wait long - shortly after the lot was placed, an unnamed Chinese investor threw a party for customers where the wine was quickly uncorked.The high cost of wine is due to the scale of manual labor. Grapes for wine are harvested daily on a berry of only 8-10 kg in a good year. Berries are stored in containers where they produce rich wort. For the production of a 1.5-liter bottle, 180-200 kg of shriveled grapes were required. But in general, it took about a ton of green grapes to make this bottle of wine.