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January 22 - 29, 1998

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Sweet dreams

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the chardonnay go down

Uncorked by Thor Iverson

"Can you recommend a good dry wine?" It's a question wine retailers hear every day. Yet the very same people asking this question usually walk out of the store with a sweet or semisweet wine. Puzzling, isn't it?

Sweet wine has a serious image problem in this country. After Prohibition, some struggling American liquor companies started producing low-quality, sticky-sweet beverages with names borrowed from famous European wines, like "sauterne" and "port" -- a dubious tradition that continues to this day. Eager to separate themselves from the proletariat, wine snobs denounced these sugary concoctions and declared that only the great dry wines of Europe were worthy of interest.

Americans bought into the snob appeal of dry wines, but sweet wines remain very popular. The reason is obvious: people like the taste. "White" zinfandel and the great majority of box, jug, and under-$10 wines are still decidedly sweet. But so are some of the better-known quality brands. As the winemakers at Kendall-Jackson discovered some years ago, leaving a little unfermented sugar in a bottle of ostensibly dry chardonnay, merlot, or cabernet sauvignon increases sales; it's now a fairly widespread practice. In the rest of the world, off-dry (semisweet) wines and decadently sweet dessert wines are some of the most prized wines made -- and occasionally the most expensive, since the techniques required to make a high-quality sweet wine can reduce a producer's total output to less than 100 bottles of deliciously honeyed nectar per year (see "The Sweet Truth," below right).

Though we all claim we can identify the taste of sugar, it can be pretty easy to misidentify sweetness in wine. Some particularly rich and flavorful varieties, like Alsatian gewurztraminer, Condrieu (a white wine from France's Rhône Valley), and chardonnay, are often mistakenly believed to be sweet when they are, in fact, simply powerfully flavored wines. The term I like to use for this character is oily, because of the way the richness coats the palate like honey or a very milky chocolate.

The sweet truth

To get technical for a moment, sweetness is a measure of the residual sugar in a wine. (That's sugar that was not converted to alcohol during the fermentation process.) Residual sugar can be produced in many ways, including harvesting the grapes late (which concentrates the sugar), drying or freezing the grapes (which achieves similar results), deliberately stopping the fermentation process (occasionally by adding a sweet alcohol like brandy to the fermenting juice), or even allowing a special mold called botrytis (also called noble rot) to shrivel and dehydrate the grapes on the vine.
The key to a good sweet wine is balance. Sufficient acidity keeps wine from tasting flat and sugary, tannins provide a bitter counterpoint, and a reasonably high alcohol level coupled with good acidity prevents a hedonistic dessert wine from becoming wine-flavored syrup. Imbalances can also make dry wines taste sweeter than they should. Unsurprisingly, proper balance plays a large role in determining whether sweet wines will go with food.

Extremely sweet wines should usually be consumed with or as dessert. Among the few exceptions are port with Stilton, and Sauternes with genuine French Roquefort or foie gras (either way, an expensive proposition). Off-dry wines are a different story. They're a perfect match with ham or any sweet-glazed meat or vegetable, they stand up to reasonably spicy food, and they go particularly well with the spicy-sweet mixture of flavors in Chinese and Thai cuisine.

The following recommendations explore different kinds of sweetness and, where appropriate, the foods they complement.

DRY WINES

1993 Vinicola Navarra Las Campanas ($6.99). A bone-dry and acidic Spanish rosé. (Though it will probably come as a shock to many lovers of pink "blush" wines, most of the world's rosés are dry.) This one tastes of cherries, strawberries, and red apple. Serve chilled with pizza or any kind of tomato dish.

1993 Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte (Pessac-Léognan) ($33.95). A dry white Bordeaux, but its nearly overwhelming waves of dusty orange peel, green apple, grapefruit, pear, lemon, and lime with an oily finish give the impression of a slight sweetness. It will evolve and change over the course of an evening, and would be perfect with a flavorful white fish (like red snapper) in a salty sauce.

OFF-DRY WINE

1996 Kurt Darting Riesling Spätlese Pfalz Durkheimer Spielberg ($11.99). This off-dry white from Germany is a good value, with aromas of apple and peach, and a buttery, honeyed character supported by strong acidity. It will go equally well with honey-glazed ham, Chinese orange chicken, and pork chops with applesauce.

SWEET WINES

1996 Coppo Moscato d'Asti Moncalvina ($17.99). Slightly bubbly, with a nose of honeydew, celery, sweet onion, lemon, and green apple. Tastes like a funky fruit salad (banana, mango, kiwi, sweet tangerine), with a light sweetness underlying everything. Serve this low-alcohol wine with fruit desserts or spicy fish soup.

1994 Domaine de Coyeaux Muscat de Beaumes de Venise ($18.95). A dessert wine from France's Rhône Valley, this is a fruit festival of oranges, nectarines, pears, and grapefruit, with a honeyed apple finish. Perfect with crème brûlée.

N.V. Chateau Reynella Fine Old Tawny Port Old Cave (McLaren Vale) ($13.99). One of the better ports from Australia, with delicious flavors of roasted pecans, cashews, and almonds; candied orange and wild berry syrup; and buttered and maple-coated waffles. To be enjoyed by itself in front of the fire after a long day of skiing (or shoveling).

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@phx.com.


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