Wine with Meg + Mel
The fun + frank podcast which helps you navigate the world of wine. Hosted by Australia's first female Master of Wine Meg Brodtmann, and self-titled Master of Sabrage Mel Gilcrist.
Wine with Meg + Mel
The Art of Dessert Wines
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Sweet wines are often purchased during tastings but rarely opened at home due to our psychological tendency to prefer sweeter options in small quantities rather than full glasses.
• Four different styles of dessert wine explained - late harvest, cane cut, muscat, and botrytised Sauternes
• Dessert wines need sugar levels above 50 grams per litre to be classified as sweet
• The psychology of purchasing dessert wines mirrors the Pepsi-Coke taste test experiment
• Late harvest wines concentrate natural sugars through raisining without botrytis influence
• Cane cut is a uniquely Australian technique where the cane is cut from the trunk to trigger raisining
• Botrytised wines like Sauternes require specific climate conditions with morning fog
• Dessert wines are often best paired with salty, fatty foods rather than desserts
• Blue cheese, terrine, and prosciutto create excellent contrasting pairings with sweet wines
• Most dessert wines don't require extended aging and should be enjoyed within a decade
• Opening a special bottle can make an ordinary day feel like a special occasion
Don't wait for a special occasion to open that dessert wine you've been saving. Get a nice cheese board, invite some friends over, and make opening the bottle the occasion itself.
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Welcome to Wine with Megan Mel
Speaker 1Hi and welcome to Wine with Megan Mal. We're here to help you navigate the world of wine. I'm Mel Gielicrease. I'm a master of wine. Meg Brutman, we've got our mate Austin here in the corner and today we have dessert wine.
The Psychology of Sweet Wine Buying
Speaker 2I know and again, I've been teaching WSCT, level 2, which I don't normally do and we talk about sort of sweet wine production and I thought you know there are so many ways of making sweet wines we haven't really talked about it. We're not even going to cover all the ways of making it today, but I've got a little range of some caught and cane cart and botrytis and late harvest and different grape varieties. So yeah, just a little bit of fun. And also most of this is out of my cellar because I have a stupid amount of it and I'm never going to drink it, so a good way of getting rid of it is so my little marketing nod that I can throw in here is you know, the Pepsi Coke experiment, how everyone likes, thinks they like Coke better than Pepsi.
Speaker 1But then Pepsi did these things all around, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, and they got everyone to taste.
Speaker 1They do the difference, yeah, the difference yeah, and everyone liked Pepsi better in those things and it was this big campaign out of it. Everyone likes Pepsi better, but when you're tasting small quantities, the sweeter one will always win. But if you actually want to have like a full glass or a bottle of something, you don't necessarily want a sweet one. That, my friend, is why every time you go tasting you buy a bottle of dessert wine because it tastes so damn good. When you have one little sip at the end of your taste, that's right, right, and you drink it and never drink it.
Speaker 2It was interesting because these are random wineries that I've clearly visited and done exactly that, like the psychology of it. Like Gapstead Winery I know I visited I do not remember ever buying this wine and also sometimes it's so yum at the time, especially when you've had all these wines and the acid's building up and all of a sudden you taste these things.
Speaker 1It tastes like apricot and you're like, yeah.
Speaker 2Nice, we'll have some blue juice tonight. It'll be lovely they can never do it.
Speaker 2No, I have a lot of it. So, yeah, I thought I'd dug deep into the salad to bring it all out. But what have I been drinking? Is that what you're going to ask me? Thank you, yeah, I had speaking of sweet wine, this is why I wanted to talk about it a Piccolette from Heathcote made by Vignaia Masson. So Mario Masson was the winemaker at Gary Earring and at Mount Mary Great heritage, he's Italian. Mount Mary, great heritage, he's Italian. They continue to produce wine and he's a good mate of my husband's and gave it to him. It was really really lovely, just great. It is sweet, yeah, but just delicious. And you know, I was just joking about the blue cheese, but it would be really nice with some foie gras. Don't come at me about foie gras, okay.
Speaker 1Or pate, isn't come at me about foie gras, okay, or pate or some blue cheese. Isn't your child like vegan?
Speaker 2Oh no, elliot saw the light. Thank God back into the fold. We've re-adopted him as our actual child because he's eating meat. That said, when he was vegetarian, I was the greatest vegetarian cook, like 101 ways with tofu.
Speaker 1I can't believe how much tofu I was like. I know Wow.
Speaker 2And I really enjoy it, like I still now, to this day. We have a dish that's called saucy tofu that we, like we will elect to eat. Wow, I know, heard it here first. Yep Fun fact, fun fact. Okay, this is a classic. You know Essex in first Yep Fun fact, fun fact. Okay, this is a classic. You know Essex in England yeah, like we've all debunked the boguns.
Speaker 1What's like the bogun of. I don't know what do they call boguns Y boys?
Speaker 2Essex. Oh okay, y boys, jamie Oliver is from Essex, so they've all got that sort of it With climate change. A Burgundy producer has hooked up with a vineyard in Essex and is going to be producing Burgundy. So the local producer, danbury Rich, already highly acclaimed in its own right, has announced it is partnering with Burgundy's domain Duroche to make very limited quality quantities of a Pinot Noir still wine.
Speaker 1Is that like the equivalent of us making fancy wine in Mowi?
Speaker 2Well, the thing that I thought was funny was you can have, because they're from Chivri Chambouton, yeah, so you can have Chivri Chambouton on your label, or Essex, essex, awesome yeah that's good, I like that, yeah. Awesome, yeah, that's good, I like that, yeah. So I just yeah. It's a meeting of two very distinct cultures.
Speaker 1Yeah, awesome, okay, how many dessert wines are we doing here?
Late Harvest: Gapstead Semillon
Speaker 2We're doing four, Four. So the first one I have is a just remind me. Have is a just remind me. Uh, gapstead, late harvest simeon. So what this is is that they leave the grapes on the vine and they start to raisin. So you don't get any of that botrytis, marmalady, apricot character. You get more of raisin and honey and they're dried out. Now Semillon what is the characteristics of Semillon Lemon? So you might get a little bit of preserved lemon character. The first thing you notice is the deep colour.
Speaker 2Preserved lemon for sure. Yeah, and I can't imagine that this would have huge searing acidity, because Semillon doesn't tend to have huge amounts of acidity, but when it dries out, that acid is concentrated.
Speaker 1Mm-hmm, oh, my God, that is so yum. It's not sickeningly sticky, though, no, no, really well balanced it is.
Speaker 2So Gapstead's up in King Valley.
Speaker 1King Valley. Is it King Valley? Yeah, what Myrtleford, where are they? Yeah, yeah, what Myrtleford, where all the yeah yeah, huh, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2Been on the market for years. If you wanted to buy, it has it.
Speaker 1Can someone buy it for us?
Speaker 2So one of the things that you find with sweet wine is that there's often a broadness about it because you have to really squeeze it to get everything out, and that's often why it's darker in colour as well, because it's picking up the colour from the skins.
Speaker 1So this is a late harvest wine. We're not expecting botrytis, we're just expecting sultana and raisin fruit. Is there a legal amount of like sugar that you need to have to call it?
Speaker 2Sweet, it's got to be above 50 grams per litre. Yeah, okay, this is probably, I reckon, 80 odd. Okay, but the acid's not that high in this wine.
Speaker 1Yeah, and generally with dessert wines we see lower alcohol.
Speaker 2Do we Moderate? Moderate 13.5, 14.5. So tins can heat up to 14.5. Yeah, okay, but they will often stop fermenting naturally because they hit that and there's still a lot of sugar left over and so it's a really pressured environment because it's like trying to you would have to have so much sugar to still hit 14 alcohol and still be sweet.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's almost. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2So you're picking them between potential alcohol of 17.5 to 24. Whoa yeah, but of course they can't ferment out to that because they'd be undrinkable. So that is our late harvest wine.
Speaker 1Yum, yum, yum. Okay, the next one Delicious start.
Cane Cut: An Australian Technique
Speaker 2Is called cane cut, and this is from shadow to bilk. So what they do we all know a cane is the piece of wood that the grapes, the shoots come out of, with the leaves. Yep, what they do is at the trunk, they cut that cane so that you're effectively raisining the grapes. There's no water coming in, there's no more sugar coming in, there's no more acid. So you're rais, raisining the grapes. There's no water coming in, there's no more sugar coming in, there's no more acid, so you're raisining them, but on the vine. Yeah, now, not many climates can do this. I mean Chattatabilk's in Upper Goulburn. It's quite dry, they don't have a lot of summer and autumn rain, so they can do it. So they just let it hang out there naturally and it naturally concentrates. And it's a particularly Australian thing that we've been doing over the years to make these sweet wines. And this is your favourite grape variety Massan. So I'm looking at different grape varieties, I'm looking at different methods of production, different regions.
Speaker 1It smells, thank, you. It smells more apricot than the last one was very preservable.
Speaker 2Yeah, it does this one's more apricot.
Speaker 2I wonder if, because it is hung out late in autumn maybe. What year is it Austin? Sorry, this is, I don't know. Yeah, no labelling's on this 2019. That was quite. Yeah, it was a warmish year. I'm just wondering sometimes with these, because you are starting it, because you are leaving the grapes out on the vine for a long period of time, there is likely to be some botrytis Not a whole heap of noble wine Botrytis but Botrytis is just a normal part of winemaking. It happens on Chardonnay and Cabernet and it just happens in sort of these dampish years. So there may be a proportion of that. So you may be seeing that.
Speaker 1Is there something kind of savoury going on there, like almost like an olive brine or something? I don't know. I'm getting that on the nose, which is weird, because I wouldn't normally ever get that in dessert wine.
Speaker 2No, you're right, it's almost like a green olive tapenade. Yeah, it's cool Milling up the. Yeah, if you've ever gone out to get olive oil, when they make it into the paste it smells like that. We got our new olive oil a couple of weeks ago, oh my God nice. Really good, fresh off the press.
Speaker 1It tastes like it too.
Speaker 2Well, this is Marsan, so I don't think I've ever had a sweet Marsan wine.
Speaker 1That's interesting, that's cool.
Henschke Muscat: Past Its Prime
Speaker 2That's cool. The next one's just a point of interest. Had it in my cellar, no idea where I got it from. It is a Henschke Eden Valley musket, sweet musket. I'm assuming it's a late harvest harvest. I don't think it's got any botrytis in it. Just looking at the color I would suggest not and I chose this a because I wanted to get rid of it and out of my cellar. Um, but also just so far we've seen a semi on which is sort of that traditional grape that you get in saturn and barsarsac and the noble one in Australia. Then we've looked at a Marsan pretty crazy.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And now we're looking at a musket which is used to make a lot of sweet wines across the world. Remember we were talking about that Vinsanto the other day and you'd never heard of Vinsanto? Yeah, on the MW exam, that's usually made from a musket, great variety, thank you. Oh, does it smell salty?
Speaker 1It smells like something I can't pick. Oh my God, hang on. Yeah, no, it's seafood.
Speaker 2Cod liver oil. It's a type of seafood. Did you ever drink Hypol as a child? No, or you used to have to have a teaspoon of cod liver oil every night. My mum was a real hippie, austin. I actually really loved it. It was called Hypol. I don't know why, but it smells like Hypol.
Speaker 1It's seafood. I just smell seafood. Yeah, it's like a it smells like high-pol. Could live around or like seafood and chlorine.
Speaker 2What year is it? This may be a little bit past it. This was in my cellar, I think it is past it.
Speaker 1This is not. It's like it's trying to be floral, but it's not 2008.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's 2008. It's 17 years old.
Speaker 1I can smell that there was once a pretty flower. I thought that there was once a pretty flower but someone's like stomped on it.
Speaker 2Okay, we might move on, because that was very broad and simple, not it. No, oh, and it tastes like high pole as well, oh, which reminds me I've got to ring my mother, okay, this whole podcast is just your to-do list. That's right. Memory jogs Just while I remember to to the law people that were listening. I have left a message about working with you for your tasting in september okay.
Speaker 1So there are these people that want meg to run a master class for their trade show things and they've been emailing the podcast email and I've been forwarding it to Meg and she keeps forgetting to get back to them.
Speaker 2I did ring them and I left a message.
Speaker 1I can't believe that you just announced on the podcast, I left. That is so funny.
Sauternes: The Botrytised Classic
Speaker 2They might not want me after that level of professionalism. Anyway, I love the Loire, so I'd be more than happy to do it. Moving on, we have a Dort D-O-U-R-T-H-E, so turn from 2009? Ooh, seven, wow, okay, another very old wine, clear Bottle, interestingly. Yeah, they all have been in Clear Bottles.
Speaker 1They all. Yes, the colour is part of the Saturne is in Bordeaux.
Speaker 2It is made famous because it has three grape varieties, which is Semillon, sauvignon Blanc and Muscadel. It makes a botrytised wine and the botrytis happens because you have these warm autumn days but there is a spring that comes up into the Ceyron River and creates a fog, so moisture that settles over the vineyards, getting the botrytis to spore and so you get the botrytis on the grapes. They then go through and they pick, bunch by bunch by bunch by bunch by bunch, so that they've got 100% botrytised grapes, often fermented in oak and stored in oak, usually between 13.5% and 14%. Alcohol and sugars range between 80 to 200 depending on the producer and the year. So deep gold in colour. This is a 2007.
Speaker 1I can't even get past the nose. It is still like there's still something savoury, like there's stuff there that's not just fruit.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, there's a lot of tertiary character in there, don't forget. These are fermented in oak as well, so I think you're seeing some of that resinous oak come through. It's got all of that apricot and marmalade that you'd expect from botrytis and just the acidity is fantastic, very broad, because you're starting to lose some of that primary fruit, so it's starting to get a bit of phenolic grip to it. But pretty nice, it definitely needs to be drunk. It should have been drunk probably three or four years ago. It's down in the deep, dark depths of my cellar. I just don't go down there because there's spiders.
Speaker 1Everyone just loses, but also Saturn all the time Forgot.
Speaker 2I had it. But again, we don't drink a lot of it. We get it and we go, we're going to have it with this and it's going to be a special occasion and we're going to have friends over, and then you just never have it.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's kind of I mean for reference, people listening. Sauternes famously.
Speaker 2Shout out to Kim.
Speaker 1Well, I was going to say famously not cheap.
Speaker 2No, no, this would be. Dort is one of the cheaper producers, so I suspect I was gifted this, but I have some really nice 2009s that we could do. How's your husband feel about you just raiding your? He doesn't really. They're my wines, so I buy them and I have to hide them from him.
Speaker 1That's why I forget I've got them, so that he doesn't know that he's I think it would be really fun to do an episode with him one day. Like the two of you is quite funny. He's really dry. Yes, and you're all Meg and yes, yeah, maybe one day we'll do it.
Speaker 2He just tells me to shut the fuck up.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's a bit like that, it's funny. Yeah Well, there's our sweet wines.
Speaker 2That was awesome. Yeah, and if you do open it, open it with your friends for a dessert wine one night. The next day, go out and get yourself a Ploughman's lunch, get some nice terrine and some blue cheese and have these sweet wines with that. Yes, and that's where I find them much more enjoyable.
How to Enjoy Your Forgotten Dessert Wines
Speaker 1You're right, meg, that's where I find them much more enjoyable. You're right, Meg, this is your call, this is your wake-up call to drink that dessert wine that you've had sitting in your shelf for let's face it, and we've all got them. You've had it there for years.
Speaker 2I bet you've got a pile.
Speaker 1I have about five. Go get it. Invite your friends over, make a nice. What are you going to make? Apple crumble, something like that?
Speaker 2No, don't even make anything sweet, make something savoury with salt in it, and it just goes beautiful.
Speaker 1Do a cheese board after dinner and everyone drink it. And then what? The next day you're having terrine with it.
Speaker 2Terrine prosciutto, blue cheese, foie gras is the classic pairing, but we don't promote that apparently. Okay, mel's like no, no, no, tureen or ethically produced pate. There we go, anything with a lot of fat and a lot of salt, and often you buy them in half bottles as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, but do you know what? Sometimes we just wait for an occasion, we wait for something special, but what we forget is that sometimes opening a great bottle makes it a special occasion. It makes it a special occasion Very philosophical of you, mel. Go have your special occasion, you deserve it. It's the middle of winter. Have a nice sweet wine, you'll love it All. Go, have your special occasion, you deserve it. It's the middle of winter. Have a nice sweet wine, you'll love it All right, this has been great. Thank you, meg. Thanks for bringing some nuts and yummy stuff from your cellar. We'll be back with you next week. We haven't planned it yet, so we don't know what we're going to bring you, but I'm sure it'll be great. It will.
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