 The conversation usually goes something like this:
Me: ‘I’ve got a really nice dessert wine here – would you like to
try some?’
Guest: ‘Oh, no thanks. I don’t like sweet wine.’
Me: ‘Have you tried any good ones?’
Guest: ‘Well, no, probably not .... but it’s just not my cup of
tea.’
Me (with just a hint of menace): ‘You’ll try it ... or you leave
now.’
They take a sip, their eyes light up and they say something like ‘Wow! That’s
fantastic. Can I have some more?’
Now I’m sure I’m not going to have the same trouble with you, am I? And
that’s because you know that what I’m talking about here is not those flabby,
semi-sweet (invariably German) horrors that Aunt Lavinia used to buy in the 1970s –
and which, despite their awfulness, could still be made notably worse by drinking them at
something near blood-heat. No, we’re talking about the hidden jewels of the wine
world, the little works of art in which dedicated winemakers strut their stuff with fruit
that’s been ripened as far as it will go. The key to it all is in the tightrope walk
of balancing the natural sweetness of the fruit with the acidity necessary to keep it
crisp and prevent it cloying.
To get a handle on what I’m talking about, pop round to Oddbins and buy a dinky
little
half-bottle of Brown Brothers’ playful Late Harvest Orange Muscat and Flora 2001
(£5.99). All the elements are here: the sweetness is something like super-ripe white
peaches and the acidity seems like zingy little whitecurrants straight off the bush. If
you like it (and I’d bet eight out of ten wine-drinkers will), you can start to
spread your wings a bit. If they take you to Clissold Wines you could try the ghostly pale
and aristocratic Domaine de Coyeux Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise 2001, at an eminently
reasonable £6.99 for a halfbottle. This estate is now owned by Veuve Clicquot, which says
a lot in my book, and produces a beautifully delineated wine full of clean elderflower
andorange-flower water flavours. ‘Kumquats!’ said Mrs.G, but I said that was a
bit highfalutin’ for our simple Stokey tastes and that I couldn’t possibly use
it.
The region with the strongest claim to being Sticky Central is probably Sauternes in
Bordeaux and the brightest star in its firmament is undoubtedly Chateau d’Yquem. Here
they pick the grapes one-by-one (‘Don’t worry, my lovely, I’ll be back for
you tomorrow’, I can hear the gnarled old vendangeur whispering to a disappointed
fruit), and the typical yield from each vine is one single glass of liquid gold.
They don’t go to quite the same extremes up the road at Chateau Filhot but the same
principles apply and it won’t cost you 200 quid a bottle. A tenner at Majestic and
Sainsbury’s for a half-bottle of the 1998 vintage gets you the honeyed nose, the
marmaladey sweetness at the front and the long, fresh, grapefruity finish. It doesn’t
get you the lip-coating intensity that seems as though it’s going to spread over your
whole face, but that’s diminishing marginal utility for you.
I did an interesting (and only very slightly anorak-y – but, hey, I’m getting
paid for it!) taste-off of the Filhot againstde Bortoli Noble One Botrytis Semillon 1999
(Clissold; cheap at £9.99 for a half-bottle). With a glass of the latter in my hand I
would (and did) guess it was a top quality Barsac (next door to Sauternes). In fact,
it’s from New South Wales but it's got all the rich gold colour, big apricot nose and
long treacle tart and orange zest flavours of its French cousin.
The Hungarians seem to have been the first people to notice that when very ripe grapes
begin to dry out and rot on the vine (from a fungus called botrytis cinerea- the
‘noble rot’) they can produce very intense sweetness and flavour. They were
selling their Tokaji wines, made largely from the Furmint grape, across Europe as
‘The king of wines and the wine of kings’ 200 years before the Sauternais caught
on. I didn’t notice many of the crowned heads of Europe in the wine section of
Safeway when I picked up a bottle of their Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos 1996 from Hilltop
Neszmely (£9.99 again, but this time for 50cl.) and their loss was my gain. A lovely
toffee-apple nose and rich flavours of treacle pud with a side of lychees was what I got
for my money, and I thought it would go down a treat with the plum pud.
‘I can hear the gnarled old vendangeur whispering to a disappointed fruit’
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