Even in the world of wine, news is seldom all good or bad, and today's item about leading Hungarian sweet wine producer Royal Tokaji is no different. Following tradition, we'll give the bad news first. We've just heard news from RT's Mád headquarters that we overstated by an order of magnitude the availability of the 2003 Late Harvest Sárgamuskotály that we recently suggested you run out and buy. Instead of 13,000 bottles there were less than 1,200, minus the six we snagged. Sorry!

Now on to the good news. We also just heard that one of the winery's top aszú (noble rot) releases, the 2000 Red Label 5 Puttonyos (pictured above) has been awarded two very important international honors. In addition to being named one of the (UK) Decanter's "Wines of the Year," it comes in at No. 46 on the (US) Wine Spectator's list of "Top 100" wines, which were chosen from a pool of 13,000 initial contestants. Spectator critic Bruce Sanderson says the wine, which is only made during notable harvests, has "alluring aromas of gingersnap cookies, apricots and orange marmalade" and a "fine lingering finish, where the harmony really shows." Of course, ever bit of good news also has a kernel of bad news, which in this case is the fact that these awards will mean the 2000 RL will probably end up even more scarce than 2003 Sárgamuskotály. Oh well.