6/500

Aszú wine production starts with specialised picking of individual botrytis-affected grapes. These shrivelled grapes are pounded into a paste and stored in tubs called puttonyos, which are then mixed in with a base wine in fixed proportions— in this case, five puttonyos per every 136-litre cask of base wine— and left to macerate for six to eight hours for extraction of sugar and flavor. After pressing, this sugar-rich mixture slowly continues fermentation and undergoes long oxidative aging in the cool cellars.