The two tokaji's tie to an amusing story.  We were doing our regular wine tasting event after work and reached for the tokaji expecting a special treat.  But it turned out these are both dry versions of the furmint grape and although a couple of us tolerated the wines several outright hated them.  Then we discussed which color star to use to mark it on our wine chart and a majority of tasters wanted to blackball it (which is actually a dark blue star).  So anyway, the grape of one of the most famous and historic wines of the world, the wine stocked by czars and monarchs, one of the few wines to get a perfect score from Robert Parker, well that grape/wine was labelled to "never drink again" by the tasting group.  (Smile).  And I'll admit I personally would not buy again either of these two samples.  HOWEVER, I'm not willing to surrender for this grape yet.  I personally gave a 10 score to a 5 puttonyo sweet tokaji I had bought at Kappy's so as long as they have another one I'm going to spring for the $35 to buy it and bring it in to save this grape's reputation.  In fact the sweet tokaji is very much like the Vidal icewine I'll review below except I remember it having even more complexity in it's sweet taste.

Anyway, the official reviews:

1) Oremus Tokaji Furmint, Mandola's, 2002 (Hungary) - This winery apparently won winery of the year in 2003 which is amazing because none of us loved this wine, several in fact hated it.  I still found it drinkable, just not preferable.  It most reminded me of the cheap viognier I reviewed earlier which had a dominant taste of melon rind.  I don't know if melon rind is the right descriptor for this one, but it clearly would have to become an acquired taste to enjoy this.  The bouquet by the way struck several of us kind of like an unoaked chardonnay, unfortunately most chardonnay's blow this sample away.  But regardless, I'm going to score it the same as the cheap viognier and give this a 5 out of 10 for low average (and I do mean quite low average, bordering on a 4).

2) Tokaji Szamorodni, Tokaji Borkulonlegesseg, 2000 (Hungary) - This smaller bottle was shaped like the sweet 5 puttonyo tokaji I loved before so I thought it might be the same thing.  In fact that's why I brought the dry sample above to work because I thought we could contrast the dry with the sweet, but both our samples turned out to be dry.  This did NOT remind me of the cheap viognier, instead it has a concentrated strength and essence kind of like dry sherry.  In fact it's like a much weaker version of the Tio Pepe Palomino dry sherry I reviewed and had poured out because it tasted like kerosene or some other solvent to me.  Well, I found this tokaji drinkable too but I personally found the Oremus dry more approachable.  So I'm going to score this a 4 out of 10 for below average.  Despite that fact though I want to express my thanks to the co-worker who brought this sample all the way back from Hungary and agreed to share it with us.  I personally, and I think most of our team, had eyed that bottle longingly for many weeks wondering what secrets awaited inside.  Unfortunately, it wasn't my cup of tea.

3) Inniskillin, Vidal Icewine, 2006 (Canada) - Ohhh, everything about this wine said we were in for a treat.  Sleek bottle, special wine style (I've never had icewine before), unique grape, and it's the first wine I ever had from Canada.  We opened this in order to chase away the lame taste of the two furmint wines above.  FANTASTIC.  It's an intensely sweet sample of exotic vidal (which I believe is a hybrid grape in part from ugni blanc, which is surprising since ugni blanc is known as a bulk harvest grape in other parts of the world).  Really cool stuff.  And I believe this is not only difficult to find but quite expensive so I'm very gratefull to the co-worker who brought us the sample (back direct from Canada no doubt).  It's a perfect 10 wine.  I hold it in comparable reverence to Royal Tokaji, Barbadillo La Cilla sherry, and the most exotic of madeiras.  Yummy stuff.

4) Ninth Island, Riesling, 2005 (Tasmania, Australia) - OK, I bought this because it's the only wine I've run across so far from the island of Tasmania off Australia.  To be honest I was expecting something kind of like New Zealand whites, so something with crisp exotic fruits.  It's OK but it's no New Zealander.  Frankly it's low average for a riesling.  So simply 5 out of 10 for low average.