Vineyards, on the other hand, can only be worked “intensively.”  Nothing requires more care and attention.  To begin with, the aspect of the vine garden influences the quality of the wine immensely.  Then there is the soil.  The best is the plastic clay (nyirok), which appears to be the product of the direct chemical decomposition of volcanic rock.  This clay absorbs water but very slowly, and is, in short, the most favourable to the growth of the vine.  As the vines are mostly on the steep hillsides, low walls are built to prevent the earth from being washed away.  In the early spring one of the first things to be done is to repair the inevitable damage done by the winter rain or snow to these walls, and to clear the ditches, which are carefully constructed to carry off the excess of water.  I should observe that in the autumn, soon after the vintage, the earth is heaped up round the vines to protect them from the intense cold which prevails here, and directly the spring comes, one must open up the vines again.  In Tokay the vines are never trellised, they are disposed irregularly, not even in rows—­the better to escape the denudation of their roots by rain.  Each vine is supported by an oak stick, which, removed in autumn, is replaced in spring after the process of pruning.  When the young shoots are long enough they are bound to these sticks, and are not allowed to grow beyond them.

No less than three times during the summer the earth should be dug up round the roots of the vine, and it is very desirable to get the second digging over before the harvest, for when harvest has once commenced it is impossible to get labourers at any price.  The harvest operations generally begin at the end of June, and last six weeks.  In the part of Hungary of which I am now speaking the labourer gets a certain proportion of the harvest.  In this district he has every eleventh stack of corn, and as they are fed as well during the time, a man and his wife can generally earn enough corn for the whole year.  The summers are intensely hot, and the work in consequence very fatiguing.  The poor fellows are often stricken with fever, the result, in some cases, of their own imprudence in eating water-melons to excess.

It is not till the third or fourth week in October that the vintage is to be looked for.  It is not the abundance of grapes that makes a good year; the test is the amount of dried grapes, for it is to these brown withered-looking berries that the unique character of the-wine is due.  If the season is favourable, the over-ripe grapes crack in September, when the watery particles evaporate, leaving the rasin-like grape with its undissipated saccharine matter.

In order to make “Essenz,” these dry grapes are separated from the rest, placed in tubs with holes perforated at the bottom.  The juice is allowed to squeeze out by the mere weight of the fruit into a vessel placed beneath.  After several years’ keeping this liquid becomes a drinkable wine, but of course it is always very costly.  This is really only a liqueur.  The wine locally called “Ausbruch” is the more generally known sweet Tokay, a delicious wine, but also very expensive.  It is said to possess wonderfully restorative properties in sickness and in advanced age.