This month, in the Tokayer region of Hungary, wine makers are harvesting the year’s grape crop. If the fruit looks good, they’ll celebrate with music, dancing and a few drops of the local vintage. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
“The Tokayer wines are late harvested wines. It means that if the climate makes it possible, the harvest starts only in the late October or sometimes November. This long period of ripening for the grapes makes possible to gain an extraordinary big amount sugar and, as a consequence, a extraordinary big amount of alcohol in the wine which will be made by these kind of grapes.”
Andras Nagymarosi is an expert on Hungarian wine.
“The harvest in Tokayer is a special feast, a real celebration. It is a combination of big party where everybody eats and drinks, a dance party, the younger people, they dance to the local folk music and folk melodies.
“A very special custom is in Hungary that the first course is usually a soup and the Hungarian men, usually doesn’t drink any wine before the soup. After the soup he drinks forty drops of wine. It’s only one sip but a very good sip, the first sip. Just to make you a good appetite for the second course.”
And if this region in Hungary has a slightly unbalanced ratio of men to women, blame it on the grapes. Legend has it that Tokayer wines help produce male offspring.
Additional funding for Pulse of the Planet has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. I’m Jim Metzner.