TOKAY is one of the world’s best dessert wines and a visit to the Tokay vineyards near Budapest is a highlight on Hungary’s tourist trail. There, behind racks of barrels you will find one of the Tokay cellar’s most discerning connoisseurs: Racodium cellare, the wine cellar mould.
This mould has made the wine cellar its home, feeding off the alcohol that evaporates from the wooden barrels used to age wine. But rather than scrubbing the walls with fungicide, the makers of Tokay encourage the black mould. It helps keep the air free of the musty odour that pervades most wine…
