The Loire Valley produces great long-lived wines from the chenin blanc grape in Vouvray, Montlouis, Quarts de Chaume and Bonnezeaux. Wonderful with fruit-cake or to sip alongside some nuts and dried fruit.Įarly morning mist promotes noble rot in the Rangen, Alsace's most southerly grand-cru vineyard. Tokaji wines are made primarily from the furmint grape (hárslevelu is increasing in importance) and spends many months untouched in small demijohns or casks intensifying the citrus-peel character of the grape and luscious caramel flavours. The finest wines should just be sipped and enjoyed on their own. In Germany riesling combines delicacy with power: intensity with a lightness of touch with refreshing life-giving acidity and low alcohol. Younger wines go especially well with fruit salads and flans while older, finer wines marry well with richer egg-based puddings like crème brulée or a decadent bread and butter pudding. The waxy, blossomy semillon and tangy sauvignon grapes of Sauternes combined with its perfect balance of sweetness and acidity make the wine a good match for Roquefort cheese or pâté de fois gras. But the great sweet whites of Bordeaux (Sauternes and Barsac), Germany's Auslesen (which means 'a selective picking'), Beerenauslesen (selected berries) and Trockenbeerenauslese (selected dried berries) and Hungarian Tokaji, are generally considered to be the classics. Harvesting the grapes is highly labour-intensive, involving several passes through the vines picking only those bunches, or even individual berries, that are suitably shrivelled.īotrytised wines are produced throughout the wine world wherever the special climatic conditions promote the growth of noble rot (and in some cases, even where they don't, as the grapes can be artificially infected with the spores). The same spore brings about harmful grey rot that can destroy a whole crop but with the assiduous attention of the winemaker, the result is luscious, golden wines with a characteristic hint of orange-marmalade often with the ability to age for decades. Where conditions are right, usually damp early mornings and long, warm autumnal afternoons, the mould grows on the skins of healthy grapes concentrating the sugars by puncturing the grape skin and allowing moisture in the grape to evaporate. Sugar concentration Noble rotīotrytis cinerea is the name of the fungus responsible for producing some of the world's finest sweet wines. The second method involves stopping fermentation so that the sugar is retained in the wine rather than being converted into alcohol. But essentially there are only two ways that wines achieve higher sugar levels: the first is by dehydration where the water content is reduced concentrating the sugars in the grape. We tend to think of pudding wines collectively, according to whether they are born sweet (muscat, for example), achieve sweetness (through noble rot, perhaps) or have sweetness thrust upon them (as do liqueur wines). There are sweet wines for just about every dessert (though be careful with dishes containing chocolate), not forgetting that sweet wines can be delicious with cheese and rich pâtés too. When selecting sweet wines one should also consider the grapes involved, and their affinity with various foods. ![]() ![]() Wines of dessert-grade sweetness (coded 6/'sweet' and above) have their own section in the List and online. Our notes on the wines should clarify this and an appreciation of how the wine was made provides more of an understanding. Levels of acidity will counterbalance sweetness. Graded in the List from 1 (bone-dry) to 9 (intensely sweet), the rating is intended to convey the sensation of sweetness on the palate rather than precise levels of residual sugar. The sweetness codes in the List and on our website are designed to help members choose their preferred style of wine.
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