I was sipping a glass of this uniquely Australian strong, sweet wine the other night while watching What Not To Wear with my 12-year-old daughter. 'That smells just like fruitcake', she said. And she was right.
This wine, once known as Liqueur Muscat, really is Christmas in a bottle, and if you have yet to discover it, now is the season. My own introduction took place in baking heat one afternoon on a long day in January 1981 on my first visit to Australia in the company of the incomparable Mick Morris, of the eponymous Rutherglen, in his singlet and shorts. He'd organised a tasting of 30 of these monsters and, as I related in my autobiographical Tasting Pleasure; Confessions of a Wine Lover, in those ignorant days I pleaded with him to prune the number to 23.
Made from raisined dark-skinned Muscat grapes, fortified and left to mature in old barrels in furnace-like sheds, these wines are a strange mixture of madeira and southern French Muscats. Muscadelle grapes grown alongside make a similar, rather green-scented wine that used to be called Liqueur Tokay. Look out for them too. They are all brown syrups but the best are complex too.
As I have outlined on purple pages where there are tasting notes of the full range, Chambers Rosewood is the top name among producers of this great dessert wine. Best value among Chambers' offerings in my view is the Grand Rutherglen Muscat which UK importers WineSearcher you will find no fewer than 150 references in a wide range of countries. Prices start at less than £5/$8 a bottle. Some of the cheapest are just a bit too sticky for my palate but they really are some of Australia's greatest gifts to the wine world.