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Sweet wines have quite a hard time, even in our house where wine is taken seriously, even fanatically. If we have 8 people to dinner, we might easily serve two wines before we sit down, one or two with the starter and two or three with the main course. Of these, some bottles might not be finished, but are likely to be stoppered for Sunday night snacking. This means that, by pudding time, everyone’s too sozzled to fancy a pudding wine. Actually, to be honest, I’m damned if I’m going to open something special if it’s just going to be chucked down drunken throats and not marvelled over.
The good news is that because of all the sugar in a pudding wine, they last quite well in the fridge and so you could share one with your partner over a week.
The most famous and traditional of these unfortified wines is Sauternes, which is made in Bordeaux from Sauvignon, Semillon and Muscadelle. We tried a clutch – not sure what the collective noun for sweet wines is – and our favourite, which was our third favourite overall,l was Tesco Finest Sauternes 2002, at £11.99 for a half bottle (ie £23.98 per bottle). It smelt of marmalade and honey, with a touch of botrytis mould (intentional) and tasted refreshingly clean and fresh in the mouth. It was exactly as expected. Sichel’s Sauternes, which is £8.99 for 50cl (ie £13.50) was our second favourite. Sainsbury’s was unacceptably dull and Aldi's was corked.
Our favourite wine of the evening was Villiera Inspiration, Noble Late Harvest, Chenin Blanc, which is £9.99 (£19.98) from Tesco. This South African copy of a sweet Loire wine is fabulous. The label is plain with a small bee, suggesting the honey aroma of sweet Chenin. Nikki thought it smelt of honey biscuits. It was amber coloured and I thought it tasted of barley sugar, but Nikki got closer with toffee apple.
Our second favourite wine of the evening was Brown Brothers, Orange Muscat and Flora, which is £5.99 from Waitrose (ie £11.98). This is a great little wine that is reliably good and is very attractive. It has a fresh, clean and very appetisingly floral smell. The taste is light and floral with a nice finish. Possibly not suitable for a rich dense sticky pudding, but delicious with apple pie or even lemon tart.
Domaine Cady, Coteaux du Layon 2002 is £7.99 from Thresher, or £5.33 on multibuy. (£15.98/10.66) and didn’t smell of much, except a whiff of grapefruit. It tasted clean with fresh acidity and was begging to be kept, so that the more interesting flavours of rotting Chenin could evolve.
Aldi’s Eiswein is very cheap at £4.99 for a 50cl bottle. It has pure grape flavours and sugar, but little else. If you need to serve pudding wine, but don’t want to spend a fortune, this one is perfectly fine.
Concha y Toro’s Late Harvest Sauvignon smelt sweaty, but had a nice tangy taste. At £5.49 from Majestic it’s an interesting experience for a sweet wine lover.
Marks & Spencer's Hermit's Hill Botrytis Semillon smelt of diesel, marmalade and barley sugar and tasted of sweet marmalade - not vintage, but some kind of basic, shredless effort.
Moscatel de Chipiona NV, which is from Jerez in Spain and is £5.49 from Waitrose for a whole bottle was the cheapest wine. It smelt of barley sugar and muscat and was perfumed and with hot alcohol. It was the only fortified wine we tasted, with alcohol at 15%.