Tokaj

According to the medieval chronicler Anonymus, Tarcal, one of the chieftains of the Magyar leader Árpád, received the land where the Bodrog meets the Tisza and built an earthwork fort there. The area was first recorded by the name Tokaj in 1067, when it was already growing vines, and the town itself appears in documents in 1353. Its early motte castle was destroyed in the Mongol invasion, but by the 14th century a stone castle stood here as part of the Diósgyőr estate. After 1450 Tokaj belonged to the Hunyadi family and then the Szapolyai, and it became a royal estate; income from wine turned it into a prosperous market town.

The castle guarded one of the few great crossings of the Tisza and was besieged repeatedly in the 16th century, notably in 1565, when its captain, the psalm-writer Ferenc Némethi, was killed. In the same troubled century Cistercian monks driven from Pétervárad, today Petrovaradin in Serbia, settled in Tokaj and improved its wine-making. In 1705 Francis II Rákóczi had the castle demolished so that it could not fall into enemy hands; only ruins remain.

The decades of peace after 1867 brought prosperity, but the two world wars cut them short, and in 1944 German and then Soviet troops occupied the town. Afterwards Tokaj declined: Sátoraljaújhely took over much of its wine trade, and it lost its district seat in 1952 and its town status. It became a town again in 1986, and since the Tokaj Wine Region Historic Cultural Landscape was listed as a World Heritage Site in 2002 it has grown into a popular destination.

Wine is the town's identity. Tokaj is the namesake of the wine region and its most famous product, and the cellars, festivals, shops and museums all turn on it. Paracelsus is said to have studied the healing power of Tokaj wine here, and the Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau spent part of his boyhood in the town in 1815–16, years that left a lasting mark on his poetry. The town's wine festival takes place around St Urban's Day in late May, and the region's harvest days come in early October.

For a town this size, cultural life is busy. The former synagogue on Serház Street, restored by 2006, is now part of a cultural and conference centre together with a modern chamber theatre named after the 19th-century actor and director Ede Paulay, and the old Serház next door houses the World Heritage Wine Museum. A writers' camp has met in Tokaj since 1972, there is an artists' colony, and in summer the Fesztiválkatlan, an amphitheatre in an old quarry, stages musicals, concerts and dance.

Religious life is mixed, as across the north-east: six denominations have churches in the town, and in the 2022 census about a quarter of residents gave their religion as Roman Catholic, a fifth as Reformed and about one in twelve as Greek Catholic, with a small Orthodox community.

Tokaj is a small town and the centre of the Tokaj district, with residents almost all Hungarian by nationality. Wine and tourism sustain it: independent producers, cellar tours, restaurants, guesthouses and river tourism provide much of the work, and the working year follows the vineyard calendar, from winter pruning to the autumn harvest. Since 2014 the town has been led by an independent mayor, György Posta.

The town's position as a crossing point still shapes daily life. Main Road 38 runs through it towards Szerencs and Nyíregyháza, a road and rail bridge crosses the Tisza to Rakamaz, buses link it with Sárospatak and the surrounding villages, and a ferry crosses to the Bodrogzug. North of the confluence the wild backwaters of the Bodrogzug form part of a protected landscape area, anglers fish both rivers, and wine boat trips set out on the Bodrog and Tisza.

Weekdays are quiet; weekends and summer bring visitors from Budapest and abroad for tastings, boat trips and concerts, and the town is busiest during the wine and harvest festivals.

Tokaji Aszú made the town famous. The region's microclimate, shaped by its rivers, favours noble rot, a mould that shrivels and dries the grapes. These aszú berries are picked one by one, traditionally into 25-kilogram hods called puttony, and added to a base wine; the number of hods added to a 136-litre Gönc cask gives the wine its rating in puttonyos. The wines age in oak in cellars that stay at about 10–12°C and very humid. Szamorodni, a word of Polish origin meaning 'as it grew', is made from bunches without picking out the aszú berries and comes dry or sweet; Eszencia, an absolute rarity, is so concentrated that it takes years to reach a few per cent of alcohol; and dry wines from the Furmint and Hárslevelű grapes are full-bodied whites.

The town's own cooking comes from its rivers. Halászlé, the fiery paprika fish soup made with several kinds of fish from the Tisza and Bodrog, and fried river fish are the classic dishes, and Tokaj wine cream soup, a sweet soup made with the local wine, is a speciality. Tokaj wines are not kept only for dessert: they are drunk as an aperitif, with foie gras, poultry and fish in sauce, and with strong blue or aged cheeses.