History of French wine of Aquitaine and the future King Henry II of England brought a large portion of southwest France under English rule. When Henry's son John inherited the English crown, he sought to curry favor among the Gascons by bestowing upon them many privileges-the most notable of which was an exemption among Bordeaux merchants from the Grand Coutume export tax. With this exemption and favored treatment in London, Bordeaux wine became the cheapest wine in the London market and gained immense popularity among the English, who call it claret. For over the next 300 years much of Gascony, particular Bordeaux, benefited by
Tokaj wine region Tokaj wine region Tokaj wine region ( ) or Tokaj-Hegyalja wine region (short "Tokaj-Hegyalja" or "Hegyalja") is a historical wine region located in northeastern Hungary and southeastern Slovakia. It is also one of the seven larger wine regions of Hungary (). "Hegyalja" means "foothills" in Hungarian, and this was the original name of the region. The region consists of 28 named villages and 11,149 hectares of classified vineyards, of which an estimated 5,500 are currently planted. Tokaj has been declared a World Heritage Site in 2002 under the name Tokaj Wine Region Historic Cultural Landscape. However, its fame long predated