Sweet talking

It was definitely the sugary flavours of fancily-packaged and impossibly-labelled German wines that weaned my embryonic palate away from beer and cider – which were all the range back in ’79 – and onto wine. Millions like me found in the fruitiness of the moselle-style whites a pleasing and alcoholic combination of flavours and freshness, while their appealing sweetness made them an easier-drinking alternative than the tart rieslings and semillons made locally in Australia.

Those of us with an eye for value sought solace with Ben Ean, Tymes and Brown Bros. Crouchen Moselle, while those of us who thought we had an image to maintain mail-ordered the saccharin offerings of Pieroth, Karl Sittman, Niederthalerhoff and the like.

Once we acquired an enquiring taste for wine, we quickly found these slightly-sweet examples less palatable, opting instead for the drier local or even French alternatives. But then something incredible happened. We sophisticates discovered REALLY sweet wines, wines whose indescribable sweetness and lusciousness were fillings beyond what even the most committed adolescent confection-addict could conceive. We thought we found heaven, but we had to learn a new language before St Peter would let us through.

This brief guide is written for all those born-again sweet-tooths who find more difficulty juggling the jargon than the wines themselves. But before we hand over the keys, it’s best to explain how sweet wines generally came to be, which according to German legend, had much to do with the Bishop of Fulda.

A messenger was sent out bearing permission to harvest the good Bishop’s Johannisberg estate a great growth in the Rheingau, but was unfortunately captured by infidels and held hostage for several weeks. By the time he was released and finally arrived at the vineyard, the grapes were nearly rotten. When the picking began they were dismissed as useless and given to the peasantry, who used them to produce a glorious elixir. This is the basis of the very technique used to make the great sweet wines of the world, but as one might expect, for it was much later that a Monsieur Focke, proprietor of Chateau La Tour-Blanche, wanted to try something similar.

As grapes hang on the vine past normal harvest time, their sugar concentration rises as the sugars still produced in the leaves translocated to the fruit, and as towards late harvest the grapes start to shrivel, concentrating the sugar already present therein.

Once grapes have accumulated sugar levels that are higher than normal, they may be fermented to conventional alcoholic strengths and still retain additional un-fermented sugar afterwards. This is residual sugar and is responsible for the sweetness of dessert wines. It is not legal to add sugar to artificially bolster up sweetness, although German producers are able to add controlled levels of ‘sweet reserve’ of the same unfermented grape juice to achieve the same effect.

Grape shrivelling may be enhanced with a successful infection of Botrytis cinerea, a common fungus which may either destroy a crop in bad conditions, or else facilitate the greatest dessert wines in the world. As fruit ripens late in the season small spores of botrytis may germinate on their surface, enter the fruit through minute cracks known as ‘microfissures’ and then take over the metabolism of the berry. As long as conditions remain stable, it will grow in this fashion as noble rot, which in France is known as ‘pourriture noble’ and in Germany as ‘edelfaule’.

Noble rot, which grows best with humid mornings followed by warm, clear days, evaporates water out of the grape and thus concentrates the sugar inside. It concentrates acid too – but not to the same extent. The fungus also produces wines of higher glycerol levels, contributing to their thick, rich texture, which owe much of their flavour to the presence of the mould. Botrytis imparts apricot, citric and honeyed flavours to these and similar styles of sweet white dessert wine. When fully over-ripe to a completely raisined condition, the grapes may have lost over ninety percent of their original juice yield.

Botrytis is a true Jekyll and Hyde phenomenon, for although it can be beneficial, sometimes it can spell disaster. In its more sinister form of grey mould, botrytis is a destructive fungus which causes bunch rot in grapes, and in wet, humid years wipes out crops.

Some interesting dry wines can also be made by noble-rot affected fruit, although too often these botrytis-affected dry styles are not intended to be made that way. Often, indeed, the rot’s identity and intentions are anything but noble. Frequently, however, these wines become quite broad and fat on the palate in only two or three years, while the orange-peel flavours of the infection take over and dominate those of the fruit itself.

Australian wines labelled as Moselle are not Germanic in style, not late-harvest, not noble-rot affected and are rarely, if ever, made from premium grape varieties. They are frequently sweetish and insipid, and achieve their sugar level by the winemaker calling a premature halt to the fermentation.

Spatlese or ‘Spaetlese’ wines are meant to be late-harvest, for that’s what the term means in German. This is the first degree of over-ripeness, and produces a non-botrytised wine around or above moselle sweetness. Some Australian spatlese wines made from muscat varieties and labelled as lexia do not owe their sweetness to any real late harvest, but to the early curtailment of fermentation.

Genuinely sticky Germanic late-harvest wines begin with the Auslese. In Germany these are harvested at much the same time as spatlese, but since the grapes are hand-selected for over-ripeness, their wines are sweeter and sometimes botrytis-affected. By the next stage, Beerenauslese, the grapes are usually quite shrivelled, significantly botrytis-affected, and are copper-brown in colour. Like the grapes, the wines are concentrated, luscious and very intense.

The final German stage of over-ripeness is Trockenbeeren-auslese, by which stage the grapes are purple, covered in downy mould, and a mere fraction of their original size. The wines are indescribably sweet and concentrated, although alcohol levels are traditionally quite low – around 8-9 by volume.

In Germany they make their best sweet wines with riesling. In Sauternes, the French use semillon and sauvignon blanc. The Sauternes district is made up of five communes, namely, Preignac, Fargues, Bommes, Sauternes and Barsac, all of which but Barsac lie between the two rivers, Ciron and Garonne. Barsac is immediately to the north and west of the junction of the rivers. Each commune is able to give its wine the name ‘Sauternes’, while Barsac is the only one able to use its own name as an alternative to ‘Sauternes’.

Sauternes is usually fermented to higher alcoholic strengths 13-14 than the Germanic styles of dessert wine and is frequently fermented and/or matured in small oak casks before bottling. Please login to post comment