February 1st is National Furmint Day. "What's Furmint?" I hear you ask.
It's one of Hungary's key grape varieties and is most famous for being used in the super sweet Tokaji Aszú dessert wines. But it can also make very respectable dry wines, even though they don't appear on wine lists or supermarket shelves outside Hungary very often.
I was pleased to see that Sainsbury's currently (Feb 2023) stocks a dry furmint as part of the "Taste the difference" range. Even better is that it's on offer - down from £10 to just £6.50.
A dry furmint has a light body and high acidity, with mineralogy and stone fruit (peach and apricot) notes on the nose that follows through to the palate where additional fruit flavours come through including pear and apple.
Like many lean white wines, it pairs with grilled white fish, but would also stand up to seafood pasta and even a curry.
If you're a fan of sweet wines, then do check out the Tokaji dessert wines. Sold in 50cl bottles, you can find some that are made from grapes affected by botrytis (noble rot) whereas others are made from late harvesting. The style of Tokaji wine will affect the price, but you can often find them at Lidl, Majestic Wine and the Wine Society.