Oh Sugar, Sugar
Rotten Grapes make really great sweet wine
I’m writing an article about dessert wines for this project I’m working on. The angle I’m taking is the common bond amongst all the various dessert wines is that as a whole they are the most misunderstood and most pigeonholed of all wine categories and as a result are often avoided. The thing is, when enjoyed in the right situation a dessert wine can be a fantastic experience, can be enjoyed with or without food and can have myriad applications. Trying to do too much with dessert wines, however, can kill the subtle pleasure of the beverage. Let me give you an example.
A week or so ago a sales rep for a large wholesaler comes in to make a sales call on me and in tow is not one but two sales managers and a bag full of expensive dessert wine. Like disco balls and smoke machines are to a REAL party, its axiomatic the relationship between how rare and expensive a wine the big companies want to sell you is to the number of suits they send in to make the sales call. When I saw multiple suits I knew I was in trouble. I gave them a few minutes to set up and indeed this “team” had put on a production of their presentation, putting out 5 wafer crackers on a nice marble platter with a spread of 5 different artisanal cheeses to pair with the wines. Wow, looked like a nice spread I thought to myself (though, I didn’t want to think about the payroll costs behind 3 people pouring 5 tastes of wine and putting out 5 crackers, but I digress). As I started going through the wines I wondered, silently, if anyone had ever bothered to try these wines with these cheeses BEFORE they thought to go out and use such a detailed production to sell the wines. It was a pretty spread, for sure, but the rich cheeses were far too salty for the subtle, delicate balance of the wines and the whole thing was a dud. The wines tasted flat and coarse with the cheese, save for one of them; a sweet vidal served with a creamy and tart French Blue d’Auvergne, a classic pairing for sure. However, the chalky, grassy, oily cheese described as “like” a Parmigano-Reggiano (I think it was actually a Regginato, an Argentine variation of the Italian classic) treated its accompanying wine like Charles Grant and Will Smith treat a quarterback on 3rd and long. And that wasn’t even the worst pairing.
Now I don’t mean to pick on these guys, certainly their intentions were good and surely I’ve seen far more egregious sins against dessert wine service (don’t get me started on the California Muscat served with Foie Gras at a fancy pants restaurant in downtown NOLA). Despite the excess and lack of success in terms of time, effort and payroll they went through to make their sales pitch that was effectively a swing and a miss, they did succeed at one important lesson when it comes to dessert wine. It is important to think about different situations and ways in which to present, serve and enjoy dessert wines and it is important to get them out of their comfort zone. Although The Mid-City Sweet wine and Cheese Fiasco of ‘09 (as I’m sure that presentation will come to be known) proved it is important to understand how to do it properly to best show the wine, but it also showed that dessert wines can have multiple applications and should be approached with a level of creativity.
Perhaps the most widely accepted, and most limiting, mores of dessert wine service is that it must be served with dessert at the end of a meal. Surely this is an appropriate time in which to serve a dessert wine, but it is certainly not the only situation in which these wines can be served. A good many dessert wines are actually high in acidity and likewise are fantastic foil to something savory, as is the case with Sauternes and Foie Gras. Also, there are wines that fall into the dessert category but are lower in alcohol and slightly effervescent and make a prefect aperitif. The applications of dessert wines are only limited by your imagination and exploring ways outside the comfy little pigeon hole in which most dessert wines live and what applications they have with regards to situations and food enjoyment is probably best started by understanding the styles of dessert wine.
Bittter Chocolate, Cheese and all kinds of foods go with sweet wines, just check out the balance and sugar source first.
Dessert wines range a broad spectrum of wines, but in general when you are talking about dessert wines you’re talking about wines that are sweet naturally, either the natural sugars in the grapes were not fermented out all the way, fermentation was arrested (stopped) mid-way or the wine was made with grapes with much higher than normal levels of natural sugar in the other wine grapes. Understanding where the sugar comes from, how it affects alcohol and what the acidic balance of the wine is are all key factors in determining whether or not to serve the wines with nuts and blue cheese, creme brule’ or chocolate cake, something savory or sweet, or no food at all. That’s where a little information comes in and that’s where your wine professional becomes handy.
By no means is this blog entry meant to be an all encompassing list of dessert wine categories, nor is this post written to give detailed dessert wine information, rather it’s written to be a starting point, a teaser if you will, for a category of wines that are really good and are often all too ignored. Being that it’s the time of year to enjoy them I’d recommend getting out, asking your wine retailer or sommelier about how best to get a little sweetness in your life this time of year. Its worth it. Trust me.
Just don’t invite the suits.
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