This past month in June during the numerous wine dinners in Bordeaux, I was treated to Yquem on several occasions. Every time I have an Yquem or any great mature sweet wine, I say to myself, “Why don’t I buy and drink this more often?” I appreciate that these delicious late-harvested wines take extra effort in the vineyard and special conditions such as ‘noble rot’ are required to craft this gorgeous honey-amber toned elixir that make grown men moan and sigh in public. But sweet wines around the world struggle to find their place in our health-conscious modern society and on our dining tables.

For years I have bemoaned the simple, hackneyed wine and food pairing edict found in old-fashioned books suggesting “sweet wines pair best with spicy Asian dishes” and Gewurztraminer is the wine for all Chinese meals – of course because of its sweet lychee and spicy flavours. It isn’t that I am against pairing sweet wines with the heat of chilis and other aromatic spices; I find intensely sweet wines play havoc with the balance in flavour of well-prepared dishes, whether it is Sichuan-style stir-fried chicken or Korean spicy tofu stew. Sweet wines are the last thing on my mind when I want a wine to accompany my spicy, chili-laden meal. My first thought is, “How would the chef feel if I just sprinkled some sugar over this dish?”

In addition to altering the balance of food flavours, sweet wines introduce the element of a sweet beverage to the dining table, which depending on cultures, can be an anomaly. I grew up not having dessert and a sweet beverage would be considered an anathema to a delicious savoury meal in my family. Most of my Cantonese friends as well as my Korean friends share similar sentiments – sweet wines are for dessert, not for the main course. Wine lovers are also similarly minded – sweet wines are enjoyable and great when they are at the end of a formal meal, perhaps occasionally as an aperitif, but not as part of our everyday meal.

The result is that sweet wines languish in the cellars of collectors, they make little inroads in the fine wine auction circles and prices rise only modestly even for the best vintages from the finest producers. This is a huge contrast to a hundred years ago when the sweet wines from Germany commanded prices en par with the very best red wines from Bordeaux. While young vintages of top first growth Bordeaux have now reached over US$1,000 per bottle, sweet wines from the very best producers such as JJ Prum in the Mosel or Climens in Barsac struggle to sell their wines at one-fifth of that price, over US$200.
 
Sweet wines are clearly not in vogue – health-conscious drinkers are moving away from dessert and sweet wines; meanwhile wine lists across many major cities around the world increasingly marginalise sweet wines. Even in Germany, the epicentre of collectible, late-harvest sweet wines, the majority of German wine drinkers prefer dry wines. “It goes better with food,” is the simple reply.

In Far East Asia, there are added challenges for sweet wines – we have even less of a sweet tooth than other cultures and at the end of a meal, we often move from dry wines to whiskey or cognac, not sweet wines. If we pair sweet wines with food, it has to be one with considerable age so that the perception of sweetness has softened and the flavours are layered and gentle rather than intense. Overt sweetness can easily alter the balance of food flavours and can be as aggressive as raw, overt tannins in young red wine.
 
There is one other explanation as to why sweet wines are currently unfashionable. In the 1960s and 1970s, sweet wines became synonymous with cheap, insipid entry-level wines. Blue Nun and Black Tower are still around and blush Zinfandel from California has its rightful place in the wine industry even today. Sweet wines slowly became associated with cheap and cheerful wines and never completely shed this image. Flash forward four decades later, studies analysing wine consumer tastes still find a disconnect between those who enjoy off-dry or sweet wines to those who actually admit to liking it.

I will be bucking this trend and making a solo attempt at making sweet wines more fashionable by buying them up. I know the best will easily age as long or longer than my top Bordeaux. Even if I don’t enjoy them all in my lifetime, my children will thank me for my prescience and generosity.

Reprinted with permission from South China Morning Post

Tweet