American Friends of Tokaji

(A tokaji bor amerikai barátai)

An English-language resource for historic information about Tokaji wine in the United States.

Established in 2006.

Written by Adam Aceto for the pleasure and education of others.

Dear Readers:

In the early 2000s there was very little information, if any, about Tokaji on the internet. What information was available was either in Hungarian (with no translation feature), incorrect, outdated or over-simplified. Having recently discovered Tokaji in 2006 for myself and having visited the region in person, I decided to start a website in order to share with others my love for the wine and the information I had collected. In the following years, as more and more investment came to Tokaj and even family wineries began to establish an online presence, information about Tokaji on the internet got better and better.

There have also been many changes in Tokaj itself: rules and laws governing wine-making have changed and modernized. Many practices which were unique to individual wineries have now become standard to all, making the entire category of Tokaji wines simpler to understand and more uniform in its look and taste.

It is therefore, not the intent of this website to restate facts which are better presented and more succinctly and elegantly illustrated elsewhere online. Many excellent websites (listed in the "Other Resources" tab) exist to educate about Tokaji today and its current standards, practices, taste profiles, etc. On the contrary, here is a resource documenting Tokaji as found in the US marketplace from World War II to 2010. This information is not easily found elsewhere but is still valuable to understand the origins of Tokaji in the current US market and in documenting and identifying the origin and quality old bottles of US import.

-Adam Aceto, 2020.

"Since the fall of communism in Hungary, not nearly enough has been written in the United States extolling the praises of Tokaji wine and asserting its historic and well deserved reputation as the world’s finest and most historic sweet wine. Despite being few in number nearly all modern-day authors, often writing on behalf of Hungarian producers, seem unable to put into English words the complex hierarchy of Tokaji wines in a way an American wine lover can easily grasp and understand. So often this due to the fact that much of the literature written about Tokaji wine is written by Hungarians in Hungarian and is translated into English not by wine experts but by barely bi-lingual Hungarians "in house" or even worse, by computer programs where detail, expression, and excitement can be easily lost."

"It is the aim this website to shed light on the subject of Tokaji in America and to encourage consumers to seek out these wines. This resource is written with the express aim to excite readers about these wines enough so, that they want to taste them for themselves. Our aim is multifaceted: to increase the public's awareness about Tokaji and the wines of Hungary; to foster import of more and better vintages of Tokaji; to increase American representation of small wineries and new Tokaji makers and in turn, make available in America the variety and quality of Tokaji wine now only available in Hungary."

-Adam Aceto, 2006.