Hungarian wine and Cuban cigars are stars in kings’ pairing

Havana, Mar 3 (Prensa Latina) A night of kings in Cuba was the result of the pairing between the Hungarian wine Aszú Tokaji (2007) and a Havana cigar Hoyo de Monterrey Havana with 20 years of conservation, a unique conjunction never tasted before.

In statements to Prensa Latina, the Hungarian Ambassador to Cuba, Balázs Heinckz, said the initiative of the union of both products arose with the intention of interrelating the existing potentials never explored before between Cuba and his country.

The proposal was to pair two symbols of both nations, a Cuban cigar and the Aszú Tokaji wine, named by French kings -since the 14th and 15th centuries- as ‘the wine of kings or the king of wines’, explained Heinckz during the tasting held at the Meliá Habana hotel.

It is a meeting of kings, Cuban Havana cigars and Hungarian wine, he stressed.

Although there is still a long way to go, he commented, he hopes in the near future that Habanos S.A. will produce a cigar born of this pairing.

For his part, Juan Jesus Machin, president of the Cuban Sommeliers Association and master Habano sommelier, told this agency that the result was a perfect union between the two products.

The organoelectric expressions of Hungarian wine with aspects of honey and nuts are also found in Havana cigars, although in a subtle way, a pairing that achieves a balance in the mouth that expresses pleasure, a union -from the professional point of view- very appropriate, the expert explained.

He reiterated that not only their history but also their organoelectric expressions bring them closer to these great products.

Aszú Tokaji expresses its notes of honey, dried fruits and a touch of flowers with nine degrees of alcohol that combine with tones of sweet wood and rising notes of Havana cigars.

It is a night of kings as Habanos are the kings of cigars in the world and Tokaji, as Louis XIV called it, is the wine of kings, Machin reflected in a sort of play on words.

The cigar selected for the occasion is very special, a 20-year-old vintage whose organoelectric characteristics are not found in a fresh cigar.

A cigar that can rarely be paired in life.

This was made possible by the good storage and care of the workers at the Meliá Habana’s Casa del Habano, jealously kept in the preservation cellars at a temperature between 18 and 20 degrees and in perfect conditions for tasting, praised the sommelier master of masters.

The tasting became a perfect union of the ancestral cultures of Hungarian wines and Cuba’s tobacco culture, he concluded.

The day was part of the 23rd edition of the Habano Festival, which today concludes its activities with the awards ceremony and the traditional humidor auction.