Furmint: Tokaj's Dry, Electric White

Furmint is pronounced FOOR-mint.

Hungary's most important white grape spent three centuries known for a wine you probably can't afford to drink often. The dry version costs a fraction and might be the better bottle.

That is the case for Furmint. For most of its history it was grown to be shriveled by noble rot and turned into sweet Tokaji Aszú — the wine kings and tsars kept under lock. Only in the last generation did Hungarian growers start bottling it dry, and the result is one of the most electric white wines coming out of Europe right now.

What it tastes like

Picture green apple and Meyer lemon, then a thread of woodsmoke and wet stone underneath. Dry Furmint is light-to-medium in body, carries no tannin, and runs on high acidity, the kind that makes your mouth water and keeps the wine feeling taut rather than heavy.

The acidity is the whole point. It is what lets these wines age ten years or more, and what makes a young bottle taste alive rather than soft. Warmer sites and a little oak can add pear and a waxy, textural weight; cooler, stainless-steel bottlings stay lean and citric. Both are recognizably Furmint.

If you drink Riesling, you already have the map. This is the same neighborhood: aromatic, high-acid, built to last, more about tension than fruit.

Why it stayed in the shadows

Furmint has grown in Tokaj for centuries, on volcanic soils in Hungary's northeast corner. Its job, for most of that time, was singular: get overripe, catch botrytis, and become dessert wine. Dry Furmint existed, but it was often oxidative and rustic, made for local tables rather than export.

The modern dry style is genuinely new. Producers only began taking it seriously in the 1990s and 2000s, treating single vineyards as sites worth naming in their own right. That late start is why the grape is still a stranger to most drinkers, and why the wines remain underpriced for the quality in the glass.

You will also meet Furmint under other names if you wander. It is Šipon in Slovenia, Moslavac in Croatia, Mosler in Austria, and it once grew across Crimea. Over a hundred synonyms, one grape, and still no fame outside its home region.

Bottles to look for

Established Tokaj houses — Royal Tokaji, Oremus, Disznókő, Dobogó — all bottle dry Furmint alongside their sweet wines, and any of them is a safe first pour. On the label, look for "Tokaji Furmint" with the word dry or the Hungarian száraz, which tells you it was made in the modern dry style rather than the sweet one.

Here is the honest part. Dry Furmint is still thin on US shelves, and a search will often surface sweet Tokaji Aszú instead, a fine wine but not what you came for. I have no formal score to hand you, only the caveat to read the label before you buy. This is an underdog in the truest sense: excellent, available if you look, and easy to miss if you don't.

Where to buy

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Dry Furmint turns up at better US retailers and online, though selection is thin and often mixed in with the sweet Tokaji bottlings — check the label for "dry" or "száraz" before you add to cart.

browse Furmint on Wine.com →

— Chris Berry

If you're switching from a famous grape

If Riesling is your high-acid white of choice, Furmint is the obvious next step, with the same bright, ageworthy backbone, but smokier and more mineral, and the two grapes are literally half-siblings through their shared parent Gouais blanc. Where Riesling gives you orchard fruit and petrol, Furmint answers with green apple, citrus, and stone. Start with the Wines Like Riesling guide, then see Order This Instead.

Part of Lesser-Known Wines: 17 Obscure Grapes Worth Switching To — the full underdog-swap guide.