Sweet & Slow
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Sweet wines, especially those that are fortified, are foul weather friends. And the holidays are the prime time for sippers like sherry, Madeira, Tokaji, and port. They’re at their best when set alongside the foods of the season, such as fruit, nut or honey cakes, freshly shelled pecans, mincemeat pie, and foie gras.
But the sad fact is that sweet wines are second only to hydrogenated oils on the list of the liquids that make American gourmets shudder. The fastest way to empty a room of sophisticated oenophiles is to produce a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream, once considered the ultimate holiday office gift. Despite the entry of top quality sherry brands, such as Emilio Lustau a couple of decades ago, the category remains sleepy despite modest pricing. As for Madeira, it was good enough to toast George Washington’s inauguration. Yet this, too, is a category verging on comatose. It wasn’t fashion so much as decades of communist rule that sent Tokaji into the shadows. Only port seems to be holding its own on American tables. Even so, the days are long gone when dinner parties weren’t complete until the pearl of Portugal had been poured.
But there’s no reason for this state of affairs to continue. Give them a chance to put their special glow into the coming holiday weekends.
R.L. BULLER & SON PREMIUM FINE TAWNY, VICTORIA ($11.99 per half bottle at PJ Wines) Along with Shiraz, Australia has a special affinity for producing port-style wines. This one, in a clear bottle revealing a striking amber tint, is gentle rather than intense in the mouth. Suffused with mellow hints of candied citrus peel, it melds perfectly with a wedge of aged Manchego cheese.
WARRE’S “QUINTA DA CAVADINHA” VINTAGE PORTO 1989 ($49.95 at Zachys) In the tricky lexicon of port, a vineyard-designated and dated bottle such as this is not top-of-the-line vintage port of a declared vintage. It’s merely from a good, rather than superb, year and a superior vineyard (quinta) which achieved vintaged quality. Never mind the qualifiers. Here’s a gentle, rounded, port that is elegant rather than intense, yet resonates long on the palate. At age 16, it’s giving its all. Roasted chestnuts and this port, with its modest richness, are made for each other when the cold winds blow.
BLANDY’S 5-YEAR-OLD BUAL MADEIRA ($22.95 at Sherry-Lehmann) George Saintsbury, English author of the classic “Notes on a Cellar Book” (1920), wrote that the most complex wines of all are Burgundy and Madeira. In the early 19th century, Madeira parties were all the rage from Charleston to Boston. Winston Churchill, during a visit to Madeira in 1950, personally served a still-vigorous bottle from the 1792 vintage – when Marie Antoinette still had her head, as he noted. Grown in volcanic soils on steep hillsides, Madeira is typically orangehued and enlivened by notes of orange zest and brown sugar. High acidity keeps the wine bright even at great age. Bual, the grape of this Madeira, is medium rather than syrupy sweet. For port-lovers, it’s an excursion into a related yet quite different realm.
LUSTAU EAST INDIA SOLERA SHERRY ($21.99 at Harlem Vintage) Nutmeg colored, briney, savory, and sweet all at once, this sherry has notes of fig and coffee. Few wines work equally well as aperitif or after dinner sipper, but this one does so handily. Barrels of sherry, lashed to the decks of sailing ships bound from Spain for the East Indies in the 16th century, were found to taste better by the end of the long voyage through the tropics than at the beginning – hence the name of this tangy, assertive sherry.
MALVAXIA PASSITO 2002, BARBOURSVILLE VINEYARDS, VIRGINIA ($29.95 per half bottle by mail frombarboursvillewine.com) This Virginia winery makes this dessert wine from an unlikely trio of grapes: malvasia (malvaxia is an old spelling), moscato, and vidal. In a traditional Italian technique called passito, the grapes are air-dried on mats to make them raisiny before pressing and fermentation. The result is a creamy white elixir evoking spiced pears and peaches. It is moderately sweet rather than cloying. This wine gracefully cut the richness of creme brulee I served. Malvaxia, unavailable in New York, would make a great gift for the wine buff who welcomes esoterica.
ROYAL TOKAJI AZU 2000 “RED LABEL,” 5 PUT TONYOS ($29.95 at Sherry-Lehmann) This wine made me ashamed that I’ve ignored Tokaji for too long. Muted as amber, brilliant as gold, this wine has a distinctive glow in the glass. Honeyed aromas of meadow flowers lead the way. Sprightly acidity balances the sweet trio of Hungarian grapes – furmint, harlevelu, muscat de lunel. Tokaji of this quality stands with top quality Sauternes or any other wine made from grapes which have been intensified by “noble rot.” In about the year 1700, the vineyards of Tokaji were the first on earth to be formally classified. The sweetness of these wines is measured by “puttonyos,” the Hungarian word for wood harvesting tubs: The more puttonyos, the sweeter. Among the founders in 1990 of Royal Tokaji Wine Company, maker of this wine, was Hugh Johnson, dean of wine writers.