Bright orange-gold. Smells lighter and livelier than the Betsek, offering fruitier aromas of peach and apricot. Then fresh, high-pitched and tight on the palate, with lively acidity framing and lifting the flavors of orange zest, apricot and spices. Finishes youthful, silky and long. Like the Betsek, this is a blend of furmint, Hárslevelü and yellow Muscat.

Royal Tokaji focuses most of its energy on aszú wines—a sweet style on which the region has based its fame. However, they’ve been working on dry wines for more than a decade; their flagship dry bottling, now called The Oddity, is regularly one of the region’s best. This rarer bottling, from the iron rich Szt. Tamas vineyard, shows how well furmint can age when it’s grown and harvested carefully: It’s a riveting wine, the apple and peach notes full and firm, girded with an earthy, volcanic-rock warmth. It lasts, emanating a warm, lively energy, and was still going strong...