Royal Tokaji
Biographies
Hugh Johnson
Born in 1939, Hugh Johnson began his life-long passion for wine as a member of the Wine & Food Society at Cambridge University, where he gained an honors degree in English literature at King’s College (a constituent college of Cambridge University) in 1960. Degree in hand, Johnson became a feature writer for “Vogue” and “House & Garden.”
In 1963, as a result of his close friendship with the octogenarian André Simon, founder of The International Wine & Food Society, Johnson became general secretary of the society and succeeded the legendary gastronome as editor of its magazine “Wine & Food.” At the same time he became wine correspondent of “The Sunday Times” in London and started work on his first book, “Wine,” whose publication in 1966 established him as one of the foremost English gastronomic writers. After a year as travel editor of “The Sunday Times,” he became editor of “Queen Magazine,” doubling the circulation in just two years. Johnson was invited to write “The World Atlas of Wine” in 1969. The research involved took Johnson all over the world; the result was a best-seller that might justly claim to have put wine on the map. It was during this travel period that he visited Hungary for the first time, in 1970, and was taken with Tokaji wines. “I thought they were the finest wines I’d ever tasted. They possessed a combination of richness and finesse with incredible age and just got better,” he says of the experience.
After a move to Essex with his young family and wife, Judy, Johnson became deeply involved in the study of trees, and by 1973, published his first book on this new passion, “The International Book of Trees,” with new editions published twice since. By 1979, with the inspiration and challenge of restoring his fine but neglected gardens, Johnson wrote “The Principles of Gardening” (published in 1983; translated into six languages). He also founded “The Plantsman” quarterly in 1979. The garden and arboretum at Saling Hall have since gained an international reputation and are open to visitors during summer months.
From 1975 to 2005 Johnson was editorial consultant of “The Garden” (the Journal of The Royal Horticultural Society). Since 1977, he has annually produced “Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book,” which has now sold more than eight million copies and appears in 13 languages. And from 1986 to 2001, he served as a director of Bordeaux first-growth Château Latour.
In 1989, he co-founded Royal Tokaji with a group of investors to revive the revered but almost-forgotten aszú wines of the Tokaj region in Hungary. It became a private limited company in 1993. Johnson and his partners, later joined by fellow Englishman Ben Howkins, have been credited with the renaissance of Tokaji wines and returning these decadent sweet wines to their noble, coveted stature. Johnson is joint owner of Royal Tokaji’s Mézes Mály Vineyard, one of Tokaj’s two great first growths, which he purchased in partnership with Royal Tokaji in 1993.
Johnson was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite by President Chirac of France in 2004. In 2006, he released “A Life Uncorked,” an intimate autobiographical tour decanting his life in the world of wine. Johnson was named an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2007 New Year’s Honours List for his services to winemaking and horticulture.
Johnson spends much time updating his existing books. For the last thirty years he has also written a monthly column for “The Garden” under the pseudonym Tradescant. In addition to his duties with Royal Tokaji, he currently serves as editorial advisor to “The World of Fine Wine” magazine and writes a bi-monthly column for “Decanter.” He is considered the world’s bestselling writer on wine, with total sales of about 15 million.
Ben Howkins, International Sales Director
Born in 1942, Ben Howkins was educated at Rugby School, and Amherst College, Massachusetts. Upon his return to the U.K., he started a winter sports travel business and in June 1961 joined Brown & Pank, the wine division of the Watney Mann Brewery in Northampton. In 1963, he became the youngest person to be awarded the Vintners Scholarship, awarded annually by the Vintners Company to enable the winner to spend six months amongst Europe’s vineyards meeting the leading owners and winemakers. For the next five years, he used this acquired wine knowledge to pioneer wine sales in the Midlands and in London.
When Grand Metropolitan absorbed Watney Mann in 1968, Howkins was one of the first Brown & Pank employees to be transferred to International Distillers & Vintners (IDV). During the next two years he was brand manager for Gilbeys Gin and Piat Wines, and group product manager for Brown Gore & Welch’s agencies, Bols, Bouchard Père & Fils and Croft.
By 1970, he had passed both Part I and Part II of the Wine & Spirit Education Trust’s exams with distinction and was awarded the Williams & Humbert Sherry Scholarship. He was then invited to join IDV’s oldest company, the port producers Croft & Co, founded in 1678, as export sales manager. He joined the board of Croft in 1972 as export sales director, introducing their products to the American and Far East markets, while continuing to grow European sales. In 1978, Howkins became export marketing director of both the sherry and port operations, the year of the company’s 300th anniversary.
During this time he lectured on port at the Wine and Spirit Education Trust and wrote many wine articles for both the trade journals, as well as consumer press. His widely acclaimed book on port “Rich, Rare & Red” was published by Heinemann in 1980. It was subsequently re-issued in paperback by Christopher Helm.
That same year, IDV appointed Howkins managing director of Morgan Furze Ltd., the preeminent London wine merchants. Five years later he was named a director of W&A Gilbey in 1985 and was invited to join the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin in Burgundy, France, and Confraria do Vinho do Porto in Portugal. He joined the Livery of the Vintners’ Company in 1986, and became a member of the Royal Household Wine Committee in 1987.
In 1989, Howkins joined the independent port producers Taylor Fladgate & Yeatman, severing his 21-year stint with IDV. He also became chairman of the Wine Promotion Board in 1990 and launched the National Wine Week concept during his chairmanship. He also became a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the International Journal of Wine Marketing, an honorary member of the Academy of Wine Service and was appointed to the Council of the Wine Guild of the United Kingdom, whose founder is Lord Montagu of Beaulieu.
He was responsible for launching the Wine Cellars and Wine Shop at Lord Rothschild’s brilliantly restored, last-surviving Rothschild House at Waddesdon. The wine program has since grown in renown each year.
In 1993, he joined forces with Hugh Johnson, the world’s most published wine author, and Peter Vinding-Diers, a Danish-born Bordeaux winemaker, to found Royal Tokaji — the first non-Hungarian company to invest in the region. Royal Tokaji is a founding member of the Tokaji Renaissance, dedicated to re-establishing Tokaji Aszú as one of the world’s greatest wines.
Károly Áts, Winemaker
Born in 1965 in Sárospatak, Károly Áts grew up surrounded by Hungary’s wine business. While growing up, Áts father was a viticulturist, serving as vineyard district manager at Tokaji Kereskedőház Zrt. (known as Borkombinát, a large state-owned cooperative, during the Communist era).
Áts studied enology at the István Soós Food Industrial Secondary School in Budapest. After finishing his secondary school studies in 1983, he enrolled in the undergraduate program at the Horticultural and Food Industrial University in Budapest. He received a graduate engineering degree in 1988, one year before the fall of Communism in Hungary.
As soon as he could, his father proudly bought him 0.5 hectare (1.25 acres) of vineyard in Mád as a graduation gift. In August 1988, Áts took a job as assistant at Tokaji Kerskedőház. In one year, he was promoted and served as cellar master from 1989 to 1994, working in Tokaj, Tarcal and Mád. Áts left Kerskedőház in 1994 to join Royal Tokaji as cellar master. In 2000, he became the chief winemaker at Royal Tokaji.
Áts’s aim is to make Royal Tokaji wines world-famous, as Tokaji wines were centuries ago. Making wine is a challenge each year, he says. Every vintage and every vineyard is so different in Tokaj: He must have a really good sense of the all winegrowing variables to make the best out of the current vintage. What Áts loves about winemaking is the continuous challenge he must meet to keep Royal Tokaji’s crown as the premier producer in Tokaj and the impetus of the Tokaji Renaissance. He says the wine business affords him the opportunity to meet many people worldwide who share the same interests, and he’ll always appreciate how wine brings us closer together.
He lives in Tarcal, a town southwest of Mad and not far from his hometown, with his wife and two children.
