I was fortunate enough to study for my WSET Advanced Cert in the company of some really wonderful people, none better than the appropriately titled Manic Mammy, aka Catherine O Neill. Catherine’s blog is packed full of wonderful writing – “reviews, news, family, wine, me” as she says herself. True to form, when I asked about a possible guest blog, she agreed straight away and a day later, it landed in my inbox. Class.
So thanks a million and over to you Catherine . . . . .
One of the highlights of the recent Good Wine Show was the Grafenstuck Bockenheimer Eiswein. I thought it was fabulous: full of pineapple, peach and apple fruit, deliciously sweet but lovely and crisp too. Until a couple of years ago my experience of dessert wines was extremely limited. I had the misconception that they would taste like treacle and be over syrupy or cloying. Thankfully as result of tasting a variety of these wines, my eyes have been opened and as result am much more likely to order a glass of dessert wine whilst enjoying the occasional meal out or special event at home.
I find the different methods of production of sweet wines fascinating. Whoever came up with the idea of fermenting rotting or frozen grapes is indeed to be applauded. It is believed that the best dessert wines come from grapes that are very rich in sugar due to its concentration from one or other of the following methods:
- botrytis, a fungal disease which consumes water from the grape and shrivels it.
- drying of the grapes after picking on mats etc.
- grapes being left late on the vine to shrivel, losing water and becoming raisin like.
- grapes freezing, allowing the frozen water within the grape to be removed.
The different sugar concentration processes and grape varieties lead to an extensive range of different styles and tastes of sweet wines.
Arguably, some of the most famous sweet white wine comes from the Bordeaux appellation of Sauternes AC. Here Sémillon, due to its susceptibility to botrytis, dominates the blend with Sauvignon Blanc often added to provide acidity and fruity aromas. Muscadelle similarly may be added to provide additional exotic aromas. The harvest in this region is often spread over several weeks as only the grapes sufficiently shrivelled are handpicked on each pass. This effort and manpower tends to explain somewhat why a bottle of Sauternes may be more expensive to alternate wines.
The way that the famous Hungarian Tokaji sweet wines are made surprised me. The nobly rotted or botrytised Furmint and Hárslevelu grapes are separated from healthy ones which are fermented to a dry white wine whilst the rotten grapes are stored and eventually pounded to a paste. This amount of this paste added to the white wine determines the sweetness of the final Tokaji Aszu wine. This process leads to fantastic complex flavours in the wine: apricots, marmalade, rye bread, caramel, honey and more. These wines are classified on a puttonyos scale which is a measure of the residual sugar in the wine. The higher the puttonyos, the sweeter the wine.
These wines merely touch the incredibly varied range of sweet wines: From Australia Rutherglen sticky to German Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese to Canadian Icewine to Italian Recioto della Valpolicella and many, many more.
So g’wan, don’t take my word for it, the next time you’re in a restaurant choosing from the dessert menu, tackling a cheeseboard or perusing wine in your local wine retailer, treat yourself to a glass of dessert wine. You won’t regret it.
