Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/66128
WINEMAKING Apothic website and learned I could snag one at the Valero Exxon station mini-mart just up the street. Ever since the mini-mart refused to help me obtain Bordeaux fu- tures, it hasn't been my go-to wine shop, but clearly, somebody is shopping there. The fact is that a very large audience exists out there for sweet wines—it always has— and these are wine drinkers with every bit as much right to have their tastes catered to as the dry-loving wine cognoscenti. Despite the near-automatic dismissal of these wines and their drinkers by critics and much of the mainstream industry, something must be right about products selling millions of cases. It may be tempting to believe that these wines are the evil spawn of crappy grapes and slapdash winemaking, covered up with sugar. In fact, almost all of them are carefully made, requiring considerable skill and judgment as well as technology. Like the wine drinkers, the winemaking deserves some respect. The varieties of sweetness experience Many things about the trend toward vin doux nouveau aren't new at all. Most of the legendary wines of the past few millennia were either made sweet or sweetened with honey and such when they were served and Cupcake's red Velvet blend has the label's highest residual sugar levels. Meanwhile the success of Beringer's Moscato (right) prompted Treasury Wine estates to launch red and pink versions (left). consumed. Through World War II, the ma- jority of wine consumed everywhere in the world—yes, even France—was at least a tad sweet. So in broad historical terms, it's not the sweet wines that are new, it's the dry ones. Even in the modern dry-is-beautiful era, wine drinkers in the U.S. have been famous for "talking dry, drinking sweet." It is well known in the industry (though not always among consumers) that a great number of high-profile wines, from Kendall-Jackson Vintner' Reserve Chardonnay to several of the leading cult Cabernets, have some re- sidual sugar as part of the package. The me- teoric rise of Yellow Tail a few years back owed as much to its come-hither sweetness as to its critter label. Like the wine drinkers, many winemakers "talk dry, bottle sweet." Not to mention that for all the opprobrium visited upon drinkers of white Zinfandel, they continue to consume millions of cases of the stuff every year. Some things in the new wave of sweet wines are indeed new. The popularity of sweet Moscato came seemingly out of no- where, rising from the ashes of the déclassé fortified Muscatels of yore. The Moscato moniker has become enough of a magnet that Beringer decided to supplement its popular (white) Moscato with pink and Wines & Vines JUne 2012 47