Sweet wine
His name is a definition, no more and no less. A little dry, for such a sweet wine. But the adjective is tender, and has the merit of its clarity. A wine is said to be sweet when its residual sugar level (that is to say in the bottle) is greater than 45 grams per liter. That said, it can happily exceed 150 grams per liter in the bottles of Sauternes or the richest Hungarian tokays. Knowing that it takes about 17 grams of sugar to obtain 1 degree of alcohol, I’ll let you take your calculator and assess the amount of sugar present in the juice before fermentation (we are often more than 300 grams per liter).
Finally there are the luckiest, perhaps the scariest too, the clusters affected by noble rot
To understand the birth of a sweet wine, it is in the vineyard that it takes place. The clusters assigned to it have something to fascinate. Some age so long that they have a scary face. Depending on the region, according to traditions, there are bunches that are left to dry on the stalk, to stunt, those, more languid, which dehydrate on a bed of straw, those hanging on a wire (the wines then obtained are called raisined). And then there are those that are harvested frozen, imprisoned in a winter shell, as in Germany, Austria, Canada, with the famous ice wine. Finally there are the luckiest, perhaps the most frightening too, the bunches affected by noble rot. the Botrytis cinerea, this is the name of this grayish mushroom, draws water from the grape, accelerates its drying out while enhancing the aromas and structure of the wine to come. It’s ugly to look at but good to suck.
Almost all French wine-growing regions bottle formidable sweet wines: Bordeaux with its essential Sauternes (as well as its satellite AOCs, loupiac, cerons, sainte-croix-du-mont …), the South-West which has a host of them, monbazillac, jurançon, pacherenc-du-vic-bilh, gaillac late harvest to name a few. The Loire has its thatch, quarter-thatch and bonnezeaux; Alsace deploys late harvests and selections of noble grains throughout the vineyard; the Jura cherishes its precious straw wine.
Very difficult to produce, very low in yields, the sweet is not very profitable and the winegrowers who devote their efforts to it devote themselves to a true priesthood. For consumers on the other hand, and provided they find what to drink it with, the sweet is nothing complicated. It is sufficient on its own, with its calories and its gluttony, it is beautiful, often tasty, always ready to show you the most sensual of life.
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