Stop Apologising for Sweet Wine

From Tokaji and Sauternes to local Muscadel, celebrated sweet wines show that sweetness is a style to savour, not a taste to outgrow. There are few things in the wine world that are judged more harshly than admitting, usually in a hushed voice over dinner, “I actually like sweet wine.” The confession is often followed by an apology, as though the speaker has just admitted to putting tomato sauce on a perfectly good steak. Somewhere along the way, we’ve allowed ourselves to believe that enjoying sweet wine is merely a stepping stone to “real” wine, and that once you’ve graduated to Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz or a nervy Sauvignon Blanc, you’re expected to leave sweetness behind like an embarrassing fashion phase from your teenage years.

It’s time we stopped treating sweet wine like the guilty pleasure of the wine world. Here’s the delicious irony: some of the most celebrated, sought-after and expensive wines on the planet are sweet. Take Hungary’s legendary Tokaji, once described as “the wine of kings and the king of wines.” Or France’s revered Sauternes, where nature conspires in the most remarkable way.

Morning mists encourage a beneficial fungus known as Botrytis cinerea, romantically called “noble rot”, which gently shrivels the grapes, concentrating their sugars, acidity and flavour into something almost magical. Then there’s Canada’s famous Ice Wine, made from grapes harvested while frozen on the vine, producing tiny quantities of intensely flavoured nectar. These are hardly the sort of wines you’d dismiss as “beginner’s wine.” And yet, somewhere between these world-class dessert wines and the supermarket shelf, sweetness developed an image problem.

[paywall]

Perhaps it’s because many of us were introduced to wine through sweeter styles. Perhaps it’s because sweetness is often confused with simplicity. Or perhaps wine snobbery simply needed a convenient target.

Whatever the reason, sweetness deserves a fair hearing. Let’s clear something up. Sweet does not mean unsophisticated.

A well-made dessert wine is a balancing act. The sweetness should never dominate. It should dance with fresh acidity, fruit concentration and texture, creating a wine that’s rich without becoming cloying.

Think of it like a well-written joke. Timing is everything. Too much of one ingredient and the magic disappears.

The same is true in the kitchen. Nobody complains that crème brûlée is too sweet simply because it’s dessert. Nobody expects baklava or malva pudding to taste like a green salad.

So why do we expect every wine to finish bone dry? One of the easiest ways to understand sweet wine is to know how it’s made. Unlike dry wines, where yeast converts virtually all the grape sugars into alcohol, dessert wines are crafted to retain some of that natural sweetness.

Sometimes fermentation is stopped before all the sugar is consumed. Sometimes the grapes are left on the vine longer to naturally concentrate their sugars. In other cases, nature lends a helping hand through freezing temperatures or the miraculous work of noble rot.

[/paywall]