I’ve been thinking a lot about sweet drinks since my husband died last month (which is why I’ve been on leave from the column). First, I drank practically nothing but strong sweet tea, then I found myself pouring demi-sec champagne – Veuve Clicquot, since you ask – with fruit cake after the funeral. (A surprisingly good match. Give it a try.)
Sweetness is a comfort, yet we in the wine trade are oddly snobbish about people who like sweet wines in a way we’d never be about preferring dessert to cheese, say, or choosing a flat white over an espresso. It’s seemingly OK to admit to having a taste for port, but an off-dry red (unless it’s amarone) is somehow regarded as naff. Not having much of a sweet tooth myself, normally I may have been guilty of that, too. Mea culpa.
You just have to think how fruit finds its way into savoury dishes to see why it would work. We partner red fruits such as plums and cherries with duck, serve cranberries with turkey, and quince and prunes with lamb in tagines. It also suits this festive time of year. Sweet reds such as Apothic (around £10 Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Wine Rack; 13.5% abv) would actually work well with the classic Thanksgiving turkey and plenty of rich accompaniments. In Europe, look to Spain (regions such as Jumilla) or the Douro in Portugal for rich, porty reds.
For me, though, the most appealing examples come from the Veneto in Italy, where there’s a tradition of using semi-dried grapes or grape skins left over from making amarone to make off-dry reds. Two well-priced examples are the Pasqua Passimento 2013 (£8.99 if you buy any six bottles at Majestic, £10 Morrisons; 13.5% abv) and the Villa Vincini Il Gran Rosso 2014 (£10 in bigger Asda branches; 14% abv), both of which have 10g of residual sugar. They’d go well with cheese or sticky, gelatinous beef or oxtail stews.
I’ve also spotted a couple of well-priced amarones recently that supermarkets finally seem to be pushing as an alternative to the oceans of rather dreary Châteauneuf-du-Pape that are around these days. Aldi has the appealing La Sogara Amarone 2012 (15% abv) for £14.99, a wine that would be lovely to sip by a fire with a few crackers and some blue cheese, while the Co-op charges £17.99 for its rich, porty Amarone della Valpolicella Villa Annaberta 2012 (15% abv). I hesitate to use the term “comfort wine”, because readers will be down on me like a ton of bricks, but, you know, they are.
