Franco,
I can help you when I get back to Pittsburgh, I'm in your home state
right now. I have some books that talk about Tokaji Aszu and my
neighbor is Hungarian so I've have several examples; both communist and
the more recent. All were unbelievably good.

As I recall it's made with Furmint grapes in a 30 gallon barrel; the
number of Puttonyos (I know I butchered that) on the bottle is the
number of 'pails' of botrytis infected grapes they add per barrel. 3
is good, 6 is great and hard to find over here in the US; over that and
it's called Essence in Hungarian. The pail is this leather bucket they
wore on their backs while picking the grapes, literally one at a time.
It dies on it's own. This wine was made well and was famous way before
the French version, Sauternes.

Joe

Franco wrote:
> That's what I'd like to know.
>
> The only thing I know is that they use botrytized grapes (not even sure
> what kind of grapes), that they ferment it to a relatively low alcohol
> content (10-11%), and that it has quite a bit of residual sugar. Can
> anybody provide some other details about this wine? Like, what is the
> initial Brix? What is the final Brix? How do they stop the
> fermentation, or does it stop naturally before all the sugar is
> consumed? Why does it age well considering the low alcohol content?
> Thanks in advance for any information.