MY BOOKS

I'm the author of a book about wine. The title is Bye Bye Tocai, it is edited by Senaus (Udine, Italy) with the introduction by Bruno Pizzul, a famous Italian journalist.


It is the story of the quarrel between Italy and Hungary for the claim of the name Tocai for their homonymous wines. The wines spell differently, Tokay in Hungary, Tocai (friulano) in Italy, as different is the vinification and taste. The Italian wine has the same name of the grape which it derives from, while the Hungarian one is made with the grapes furmint, harsevelu and muscat lunel. Moreover, the Hungarian Tokay is a sweet wine (although there is a dry version, not so much known ) and is produced, like the famous French sweet wine Sauternes, through the botrytis cinerea, a mold that affects the grapes, thus concentrating the sugar. The Italian wine is instead a dry wine, with a typical bitter almond aftertaste, a wine to be drunk at any time, from the aperitif to all meal long.

These wines have been produced for more than 400 years (under the Austro-Asburgic Empire) with no problems, until Hungary entered the European Union, thus claiming the right to be the only one to use the name Tokay for its wine. The UE declared that this right is valid because Hungary has a wine area called Tokaj-Hegyalia, where the wine is produced. In Italy Tocai is not a geographic name, but only the name of the grape, so for the EU this means we have to waive the right to use the name Tocai for our wine. This was a grave injustice, because scientists found some old maps which demonstrates that in Friuli, near Gorizia (Italy), there was a river called Toccai and a little village with the same name. Moreover, some years ago some journalists found a wedding document which tells that in 1632 the countess Aurora Formentini from Gorizia went to Hungary to marry Prince Adam Batthyany and brought him “300 grapes of Toccai” as a wedding gift thus demonstrating that the origin of the grape is from Italy (to be noticed the resemblance between Formentini, the surname of Mrs Aurora and the main grape of the Hungarian Tokay, called Furmint).

In 1993 Hungary and the EU signed a document on the protection of some homonymous wines within the European Union. In the list of the wines to be protected there is Hungarian Tokay clearly written, while for Italy the name Tocai doesn’t appear at all. They have on purpose cancelled Tocai, a wine that is part of the tradition of Friuli Venezia Giulia from such a long time. Italy and our region Friuli Venezia Giulia have sued against this decision and the first trial was lost in 2005, for the reason I have told you before (Hungary has the region, we have the grape). After that, Italy and the region Friuli Venezia Giulia have again took action against this decision, but they lost this time too. What is absurd is that the EU can grant some exceptions as far as wine namesakes concerns, allowing quite all the countries out of the EU to use the name Tocai, but not Italy. So what happens is that you can find a bottle of Tocai friulano produced in Australia, Argentina and even in Hawaii, but not from Italy where the grape is supposed to come from.

The end of the story is that the producers were forced to choose a new name for their beloved wine. From the vintage 2008 the name “Tocai friulano” has disappeared from the Italian bottles, replaced by Friulano. Bye Bye Tocai!

The book is written in Italian and can be ordered on the website www.senaus.it