Drinking Honeyed Sunlight -- Sauternes

Close your eyes. Picture standing in the middle of a field of honeysuckle. Breathe in that scent. Now, imagine someone’s picked all of the flowers and drained the nectar into a glass, added a little apricot essence, and gave it to you to drink. Sip. Taste it. Let it sit on your tongue like a honey comforter. Swallow. Let the honey and fruit dissolve in your mouth for the next two or three minutes. Focus on the blissful. Then look at the bottle of Sauternes you’ve dropped some serious coin on and smile.
I really didn’t expect to spend $70 on a bottle of wine. Really.
I’m in the midst of putting together a three-part series of columns on wine and cheese, as you know. (If you’ve not read the entries on soft cheeses or hard cheeses yet, follow those links.) I was starting on the third – stinky cheeses. The Sweet Partner in Crime and I had the luxury of a rare free weekend during this crazy part of the year, so we had the opportunity to take an afternoon, relax, and gorge on wine and cheese. The cheeses we picked were Taleggio, Stilton, and Roquefort.
I have a great book, What to Drink with What You Eat, by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page. We call this our “Book of Armaments” for wine pairings. There have been a few times I’ve disagreed, but for“classic” pairings, they’re spot-on. They made some suggestions – the Taleggio called for an Italian red, which I didn’t want, so I went with Riesling; the Stilton’s classic was port; and the Roquefort – labeled in bold, all-caps, with an asterisk (translation – make sure to try before you die!) – was Sauternes.
I gulped a bit. Sauternes is a sweet, white wine made in Bordeaux from Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc, and Muscadelle grapes. Because of the climate in this region of France, there’s a fungus called Botrytis cinerea (also known as “noble rot”) that attaches itself to the grapes, causing them to partially raisinate while still on the vines. There’s not nearly as much juice. An entire vine might yield enough juice for a single glass of wine. The wines taste sweet and have basic flavors of apricot, peaches, and honey.
Because the yields are so small from the concentrated juice, Sauternes and other “botrytized” wines are ridiculously expensive. A bottle of Château d'Yquem (the most famous Sauternes producer) will set you back $200+. More “pedestrian” versions can be had for around $70.
Considering the high costs, just realize this wine exists because some lazy winemaker with baskets full of moldy grapes said, “Screw it…let’s press these bad boys and see what we come up with!”
I had no intention of purchasing a Sauternes. I’d consider a bottle a ridiculous luxury, since I’m not a huge fan of dessert wine. I couldn’t imagine dropping that kind of coin on a bottle that I wouldn’t just drink. I went back to the Book of Armaments and found that Riesling & late harvest Zinfandel were acceptable with the Roquefort.
A’wine-shopping I went. Picked up Riesling and headed over to the dessert wine aisle to get a bottle of tawny port. I snagged it and happened to glance at the next rack of bottles. There they were, the Sauternes, beckoning. The lowest price was $50 for a half bottle. I must have stared at these bottles for ten minutes until the epiphany came:
“Go big or go home.”
I picked out a bottle in the middling price range. Chateau Clos Haut-Peyraguey 2001 1er Cru Classé Sauternes. 2001 was the year the Sweet Partner in Crime met yours truly, so I was hoping that would be good karma.
There are maybe a dozen bottles of wine that have left me utterly speechless. The SPinC called it an “Apricot-honey flambé.” I simply closed my eyes, slowly rolled my head side to side like Stevie Wonder, contemplating the fruity silk explosion rolling across my palate.
I expect sweet wines to be syrupy. The Sauternes was certainly thick, but because the viscosity is from glycerol (a product of the noble rot) rather than excess sugar, it’s the sheer power of the fruit flavors themselves that create the sweetness.
We were both stunned but said that we couldn’t imagine just drinking a bottle of this by itself. Along came the cheeses and assorted noshables that were to complement the cheeses & the wines. The Roquefort and the Sauternes were every bit as heavenly as I thought it would be. Roquefort is a powerful blue cheese, but the Sauternes was strong enough to hold up solidly, deepening and accentuating as the thick wine and the creamy cheese worked together as a delightfully melty experience. The port was listed a classic pairing with the Stilton, but something about the combination of the Stilton & pears with the honey of the Sauternes was one of the most unique, wonderful flavor combinations I’ve tried.
Then came the topper. The “perfect pairing” with Sauternes is foie gras, which is goose or duck liver paté. Not exactly something you can snag at Kroger, but I was able to find a substitute that was slightly less expensive and close enough. I first tried it spread on a cracker, but the flavor was cut too much – then I tried it again…just a big hunk of the paté, followed by the Sauternes. I almost fell over in delight.
The combination of those flavors – sweet, savory, salty, bitter, sour, fruit, meat, depth. Like perfectly cooked steak and cabernet, the sensation cements the fact that I can’t be a vegetarian. This pairing was nothing short of sexy, causing me to blurt out:
“Holy crap! That tastes like sex feels!”
This was a major moment of blissful exaggeration, and I’m lucky not to have received a well-placed backhand from the Sweet Partner in Crime. Seriously, it tasted naughty. Foodgasm.
Sauternes isn’t going to make my regular wine rotation anytime soon. We go through a lot of wine, and Sauternes is too delicious to be anything but savored. I also have no idea where this Sauternes ranks on the “absolute scale of Sauternes,” and I don’t care. We wrapped ourselves in unexpected decadence for a glorious evening.
More please.

Sweet Wine

Sweet wine, hay making, sunshine day breaking.
We can wait till tomorrow.
Car speed, road calling, bird freed, leaf falling.
We can bide time.
-Cream

When I talk to new people about wine, I'll usually hear "I don't like dry wines. I like them sweeter," at least once. The gender mix is irrelevant. I've found as many men as women out there who prefer sweet wine -- they just don't generally admit it in public. Chances are, many of these folks got smacked in the face with a big-ass cabernet when they first started drinking wine. (Or at least after they'd moved past Boone's.) Since we tend to return to that we find pleasant, and most folks have at least one positive sweet wine experience, "Sweet is better" often plays pretty well.

I'm not here to dislodge that idea from anyone's mind.

As we've covered before, when yeast is added to wine, the yeast eats sugar, farts carbon dioxide, and pees alcohol. If a winemaker wants to make a wine sweeter, he or she will add something to the wine to stop the fermentation before it's complete, leaving some "residual sugar" in the wine. Many wines leave at least a little residual sugar to improve the taste. Also, a lot of mass-produced wines do so as well, since a little sugar can cover a lot of shoddy winemaking.

I go through phases where I prefer sweeter wine. They aren't long phases, mind you, but I certainly can relate to enjoying that sugar from time to time. I also checked my archives and realized that I hadn't written about Riesling in awhile. Since Riesling is probably the best known "sweet" wine, without further ado, I decided to compare American and German Riesling:

I started with Pacific Rim 2006 Columbia Valley Sweet Riesling -- Pacific Rim is one of the many faces of Bonny Doon winery. Bonny Doon has long been a favorite in Vine land. Their Dry Riesling is one of my standard go-to bottles if I'm having sushi or almost any kind of spicy Asian food. "Sweet Riesling" isn't normally a term you'll see on a wine's label, so when I saw this offered by Pacific Rim, I decided to give it a go. I set this up as a side-by-side with the Selbach 2005 Riesling Kabinett, a German Riesling I know to be sweet and basically at the same price point. (Around $10 for either bottle.)

At first taste, the Pacific Rim is a much more straightforward wine. This is a very low alcohol wine -- only about 9%. The nose is peachy and light. The flavor is very fruity and, as promised, quite sweet. Peaches and pineapples are the dominant flavors. The finish is a little sugary and not as crisp as I generally prefer in a Riesling. Compared to both their Dry Riesling and the Selbach, it's not as good as either.

The Selbach was more interesting. The nose was also very light, but the first taste had a lot more going on. Like many German Rieslings, there was a mineral undertone to the sweetness and fruit, giving a flavor I find appealing. The main flavors centered much more on apple and pear. The finish was crisper, again largely because of the minerality.

We also tried both of these wines with a spicy stir fry that we put together. With the food, the Selbach outperformed the Pacific Rim as well. The minerality cut through the spices much more effectively.

However, one should certainly not turn away from the Pacific Northwest if you're looking for a good choice among Rieslings. Not long ago, I had the chance to try Charles Smith "Kung Fu Girl" 2006 Washington State Riesling. As Charles himself puts it, "WHY? BECAUSE, RIESLING AND GIRLS KICK ASS!" and I wholeheartedly agree on both counts, although the caps are his. Charles brings rock and roll panache to his winemaking, and this particular Riesling brings the house down.

This Riesling is on the sweeter side, but takes off in a number of directions. The minerality of this wine reminds me of an Austrian or German Riesling, but there's more complex fruit as well. Mango, pear, some citrus -- you can find something different with each sip. The finish is slightly sweet and nicely crisp. I first had this at a wine tasting with a number of friends whose palates ranged from "only sweet wines" to "sweet wines really bite." The table was unanimous in praise for this wine. At around $13, it's an absolute steal -- and with a name and bottle design like this one has, it's a perfect wine to bring to a summer party, regardless of the flavor preferences of the gathering.

If you're looking for something sweeter, you're probably better off looking down the German aisle if you're trying to find something in the $8-10 range. For a few dollars more, you'll find some wonderful domestic offerings from places like New York’s Finger Lakes region and the Pacific Northwest -- but, in my experience, the U.S. hasn't gotten the hang of inexpensive, sweet, and high quality just yet.