As I have written in wine news only recently, many sweet wines are inherently expensive to produce. Noble rot, or botrytis fungus, affects grapes capriciously and takes a great deal of patience, selection and manpower to harvest them, let alone transform them into wine. Most of France’s great sweet white botrytised wines from Bordeaux and the Loire are no bargains, and Germany’s rare, sweet bottles labelled Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese and Eiswein tend to be even more expensive.
The best-value sweet wines on the market today tend to come from Australia where wine producers have applied their inimitably pragmatic technology to sweet wine production and, now that they have negotiated the right to export them to Europe, have a wide range of bargains to offer us. The Semillon of Sauternes is the favoured grape variety. Many are made in the irrigated inland wine regions from grapes picked long after the rest have been harvested.
European answers to this style of wine tend to be much more expensive (although compare Bastor Lamontagne and De Bortolit below) but the best of them are indubitably finer and more likely to be worth ageing in bottle. Great Sauternes and Barsac are proven cellar candidates, as are the great sweet white wines of the Loire such as the Coteaux du Layon below, although in my experience Austria’s very sweet Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA) is best drunk in the first two to five years in bottle.
Tokaji (once called Tokay) made well over the border in eastern Hungary is on the other hand lower in alcohol and much higher in natural acidity and keeping qualities. In fact it has in its time been regarded as both indestructible and an elixir of human life. The fresh apricot fruity acidity underlying its exceptional richness can provide perfect refreshment at the end of a meal but I have yet to come across an inexpensive Tokaji that was anything other than a disappointment.
Recommended examples are listed below in ascending order of price per litre. I've given retail stockists in the UK. Try winesearcher.com for retailers elsewhere.
See also many more potent ‘fortified’ sweet wines in my selection of stronger wines next week.
Beelgara Estate Promenade Botrytis Semillon 2003 Riverina
£6.49 a half from www.everywine.com
Like the most delicious green fruit syrup you could imagine. Extremely ripe and heavy but with sufficiently refreshing acidity too.
Dom des Forges, Chaume Premier Cru 2003 Coteaux du Layon
£6.75 a half/£11.75 from Berry Bros, £8.99 per 50cl Waitrose
Thrillingly opulent and exciting. Thick and syrupy yet with sufficient acidity. Could already be drunk with great pleasure thanks to the heatwave vintage.
Blewitt Springs Hillsview Botrytis Semillon 2002 Southeastern Australia
£8.99 a half from Bowes Wines, Nidderdale Fine Wines, Hengate Wines, Corbins
Simple, broad and syrupy but not expensive.
Tim Adams Botrytis Affected Semillon 1998 Clare Valley
£9.99 a half from the Australian Wine Club
Just slightly long in the tooth but with its acidity more evident than its charge of sugar, it may appeal to those who find most Australian sweet wines just too much of a good thing.
Brown Brothers Noble Riesling 1999 King Valley Bro
Bro
£10 a half from Christopher Piper, Rodney Densem
Surprisingly dark but very curranty and exciting. Definitely ready to drink rather than store in the cellar though.
Ch Bastor Lamontagne 2001 Sauternes
£25 Waitrose
This sweet white bordeaux almost always offers good value and in this wine there is the added bonus of the vintage’s exceptional depth of flavour and refreshing fruit. I cannot imagine that every branch of Waitrose carries this gem which required pickings on four different dates to harvest.
De Bortoli Noble One 2001 New South Wales
£14-15 a half Berry Bros, Majestic, Oddbins, Unwins
This is Australia’s most famous botrytised wine, based on Semillon grown in heavily irrigated vineyards around Griffith. It is extremely full, sweet and peachy – a bit heavier and more developed than its counterpart from Sauternes would be. Not cheap.
Chardonnay Trockenbeerenauslese 2002 Burgenland, Austria
£15 a half Marks & Spencer
An oddity: a very full, round, sweet version of the grape that launched a thousand hen parties made by Nikolaus, grandson of Dr Lenz Moser who was once the most famous Austrian wine producer of all – in a very different era for what is one of the most exciting wine producing countries of Europe at present. Sepp Moser is a completely new, fresh enterprise.
Royal Tokaji Aszu 5 puttonyos 1999
£8.99 per 25cl bottle Waitrose
Tokaji is miraculously refreshing – and offering beautiful dried apricot flavours in good examples like this one from the company co-founded by Hugh Johnson. This wine is far sweeter than most Sauternes but does not taste it, thanks to that lively and life-enhancing acidity. In Waitrose’s top stores in Canary Wharf and Kingston you may also find half-litres of Royal Tokaji’s Betsek Aszu 1992 for £29.50.
Istvan Szepsy Tokaji Aszu 5 puttonyos 1999
£19.90 per 50cl Fortnum and Mason
Szepsy is Tokaji’s most respected winemaker, makes no compromises and this is an exceptional wine to find with a grocer’s label on it (not that I would expect Fortnum’s enterprising new wine buyer to approve this description). This, precisely, claims 11.23 per cent alcohol on the label.
Ch de Fargues 1983 Sauternes
£65 Four Walls Wine of Chilgrove 01243 535360
The canny luxury option – from the (much less expensive) property of the Lur-Saluces family of Yquem. Delicious now.