Sweetness itself isn't an issue in my opinion. It becomes problematic when it feels artificial and dominates the wine, making it flat or one-dimensional. If sweetness is balanced with complexity, I believe most people would appreciate it. However, finding such well-balanced sweet and complex wines seems a lot more challenging than buying ordinary dry and complex ones.

I drink sweet/dessert wine at least once or twice a year and have never felt ashamed of it 🙂. Usually, this happens during family events. My personal preference is some Tokaji Aszú 5 or 6 puttonyos, but Sauternes or any Ice Wein can also be fine. For people who don't like too sweet wines, I would recommend Tokaji (édes) Szamorodni, which is not as sweet as the Aszú or some Alsatian Vendanges Tardives(late harvest)Gewurztraminer

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

You drink some of the most amazing sweet wines out there, You definitely shouldn’t feel ashamed! 😍 Cheers! 🥂

I love your video presentation. I always pause the screen and write down the names of the wines. 😊

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

That is so very sweet, thank You. It is a great compliment for me. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Thanks!

I noticed u also have a great taste in vintage shirts!

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

Hahaha, thank You. They are very dear to me! 😅🥂

Ohh. Me too. Love sweet wines. But they need to be balance. Hade a 2011 moelleux Chenin Blanc tonight from the Loire!! Had it with dried clementines covered in dark chocolate, was fantastic. I’ve an amazing sweet late harvest semillon from Hunter Valley that is stunning. Great info. Thank you.

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

Of course! 🙏🏻 Everything in life should be in balance! 🍾

Have often struggled with sweet wine. PX. Too sticky and sweet. Port. Too alcoholic. Riesling Beerenauslese. Did not appeal. In the end, I found what I was looking for in Sauternes. Elegant, not too sweet, fruity without any jam.

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

PX is really at the extreme, and even for me it is difficult to simply sip and enjoy. 😬 Sauternes is already another gem, and aged tawny ports is something absolutely amazing for my taste! 🍷

Drinking off dry or sweet whites or fortified wines are not too frowned on here but off dry red may get u the look. I like PX better than iced wine. Off dry white is fine, like from Romania etc. Muscat de Beaumes de Venice and Spatlese are nice. Not too heavy but with texture and awesome nose.

@NoSediment

3 ай бұрын

I agree, high quality semi sweet or even sweet red wines (not fortified) are quite rare. 🍷 Cheers!

Riesling off dry or Kabinett for me when sweet. We love to cook spicy Asian food, and nothing harmonises better with that than those 😊

@df71091

4 ай бұрын

Need to try that, i always went with a good Riesling for asian food

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

Agree, and it tends to have lower alcohol as well, which works well with spicy foods. 🙌

Good video about sugar and balance acidity+sugar brings freshness in the wine. An interesting sweet wine I tried the other day was Gargantua from South Africa (Stellenbosch) not cheap tho. Wine made from muscat blanc grapes. Winery THELEMA Mountain vineyards. It’s a limited release of 1065 bottles of 500 ml. 17.5 % ALC, wine aged 19 years in oak barrels. I’ve tried overall wines you mentioned in the video but this was really something different wich had all the structural elements in balance 😊

As an avid Madeira and Port (and other less known Portuguese "abafados" such as the Moscatel from Douro and its counterpart from Setúbal, as well as the 500 euros 'Czar' 500ml bottles from the Lajido co-op in Azores) there are bone dry wines (whites, mostly) made in such fashion. My favourite is from the Fonseca family and its called Siroco.

Furmint. Furmint. Furmint. The only alternative to Riesling for me when it comes to sweet wines.

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

Hahha! You love acidity and freshness in Your wines, I see! 🙌 Cheers! 🥂

@Skillividden

4 ай бұрын

@@NoSediment Yeah. And I love balance in sweet wines :)

Awesome channel and love your shirts!

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

Thank You! 🙌🙌🙌 Cheers! 🥂

It's a question of nuance, a concept a lot of humans have trouble with in general.

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

I agree! Also I think there is this trend, even amongst wine professionals to prefer and promote dry wines. 😓

I like your t-shirt collection. If you make a video about Georgian wine, please do it with a Led Zeppelin shirt. ❤😄

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

Got it! 🙌🙌🙌😅

My first sweet wine was the 1983 Doisy Daene for a whopping $10 a bottle. Never looked back... Love a good sauternes, a good port, SGN's, German Beerenauslese/TrockenBeerenauslese/Eisewein, Vin Santo's etc... Good juice is good juice, period !!!

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

Doisy Daene is an epic producer! 🙌🙌🙌 Though it is much more expensive now! 😳

American author Ambrose Bierce once dedicated one of his books of wit to "enlightened " souls and gave as an example "those who prefer dry wines to sweet ". That this was written about the turn of the 20th century shows how long this has been debated. I like a good sweet red wine, but I am also glad that Chenin Blanc was mentioned as I like that too. I also like the works of Bierce, but I respectfully disagree with him on the above.

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

Now, it seems like I book I would like to read. 🫡

@claywest9528

4 ай бұрын

@@NoSediment The book is "The Devil's Dictionary " and it is in the Public domain. You can read it online at Project Gutenberg. The quote is in the authors preface. You might also like the definition of connoisseur and his definition for wine, which was directed at the American Temperance movement of the day.

oh yeah, I've been shamed by a girl from Champagne region for liking sweet Champagne. She said "If you don't like dry Champagne, then you don't like real Champagne"

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

That is so, so, so wrong! 😑

Hi another most intersting video. I love Port Wine for example, the age they can perform at are astonishing. But also love the Madeira which is of great value here in Sweden at least. And then You have all the sweet wines which we have no knowledge about but which are so goood. Thanks for a very good video and given us curiosity to the world of sweet wines :)

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

I wish we had Madeira here available, and at great value. It is one of the most difficult wine to find here. But I agree with You beautiful, rare wines.

Great video. I thought i was very noobie with wines, cause i like it sweet. Sauternes, Madeira, white port are great 😊

@NoSediment

Ай бұрын

Really great wines, I agree! 🙌

Some foods, especially spicy rich sauces (looking at you Thailand) beg for wines with a bit of sugar along with acid. Good reminder, Agnese!

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

Yes, indeed those spicy foods does require some sweetness in wine to pair beautifully. 🙌

My wife and I love Sauternes and Barsac with Chateau Climens being her favourite. But we both prefer them before they peak as their youth stops them from being too cloying. Spatlese, BA are great too. And the 2nd label Barsacs are great to cook with as are Madiera and Port.

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

I loved to read this, it is so refreshing to hear that sometimes people honestly enjoy wines a bit younger, than what books suggest. I think that being honest with themselves and not chasing someone else’s rules (in wine) is more fun! Cheers to You both! 🙌🥂🍾

Thank You!!! I’ve noticed that a major source of confusion for consumers is that many wine professionals, including Wine Writers and Somms, will characterize a fruit forward Table Wine as ‘sweet’ when, in fact, most of these wines will have less than 2g sugar per litre. In fact, a big, juicy tasting California Cab Sauv with ripe black fruit characteristics will often have less than 2g/litre RS. Compared to a 355ml can of cola which can contain up to 38g of sugar, the sugar content of most Table wines is negligible, yet major confusion still exists because of inappropriate use of the term ‘sweet’ to describe a wine that simply has prominent and/or ripe fruit characteristics. As for shaming, for decades the jurisdiction in which I live (currently approx 5 million people) thoroughly enjoyed off-dry to medium sweet Piesporter Gold and Michelsberg wines. Official stats showed that these wines were the top sellers year after year. And then certain wine writers began denigrating any white wine as tacky and cheap that wasn’t bone dry and this perception was amplified in popular culture, especially by dry white producers. Of course, this coincided with the low carb diet trend which was obsessed with lowering or eliminating sugars from any source whatsoever. Alas, by the 2010s these lovely wines could scarcely be found on local store shelves or wine lists. So, an entire population was effectively shamed out of drinking the wines they had always loved - a sad variant of the ‘Sideways effect’.

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

Wow, thank You for a very insightful comment. This is very sad to hear. I love off-dry Riesling, and it usually will have less alcohol as well, lovely to enjoy chilled on hot summer days! 😅

@judistench2167

4 ай бұрын

@@NoSediment You’re very welcome. Yes I still love dry to medium sweet Riesling Table Wines - wonderful fruit and refreshing acidity - all the better when they also present a big petrol STANK on the nose lol.

I like riesling but ill check the dry wines

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

I love Riesling and I really don’t mind the residual sugar in it sometimes

We love a lot of sweet wines. Our first foray into sweet wine was Isvin. Can never find it, but the Canadians produce great icewines that are available here. With very spicy Indian, Asian or Italian meals, we love a sweeter Gewurtztraminer or a Valpolicella Ripasso. Our rule with dessert wines is “small or smaller quantities, and rarely” because our preference in great sweet wines is for the expensive ones!

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

This is so cool, and Ice-wine is definitely towards the more expensive category. I also like to have a small sip of sweet wine at the end of the meal, however juicy Chenin Blanc with some r/s is something I can enjoy throughout a meal! 😅

Vin santo from Chianti ❤❤❤

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

🍷🍷🍷

For example, had a 1998 Riesling Auslese, was phenomenal.(i drank alot of sweet wine, my cellar is filled with old TBA and all that)

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

Those can age for decades! 🙌🙌

I think that too often we, (humankind) are rather extremists and this also carries over into wine. As going back to the 70s and 80s Blue Nun and overly sweet Mateus Rose were THE things to drink, there is an urban legend (or is it a myth, I don't know) that the Beatles were drinking Blue Nun. So to pull away from that in the 90's and especially after the year 2000 people went all in with "I only drink dry wine". What has been lost or forgotten is that classic sweet wines (not the disgusting rubbish plonk), were great wines hundreds of years ago and still are. Tokaji Aszu, Sauternes, VDN, Port, Madeira, Riesling TBA & BA, Ice Wein/wine are classics that are highly enjoyable. I have also have great and memorable experiences, tasting, buying and drinking off-dry or semi-sweet wines that were "out of the box" wines. They went against typicity and expressed the vintage or the terroir and made a lasting impression. Cheers & great video!

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

I agree, we like to go into extremes, when in fact the beauty in everything lies within balance. Too much food leads to obesity, too little to starvation, just enough and we are healthy. I wonder, why people have that sense: “if some is good, more must be better.” It almost never is that way! 🤷‍♀️ Thank You once again for a insightful comment’ 🥂

I prefer low intervention wines - no added sugar and no arrested fermentation, usually, but not always bone dry. Modern chemistry can make all sorts of flavors and aromas, but you use too much and you no longer have wine.

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

I understand what You are talking about, however, bone dry wine is actually more modern than off-dry. It is because natural yeasts usually struggle to metabolise all the sugars, and winemakers need to add some food sources for them, aerate the must or even re-introduce yeasts to finish stuck fermentation. For example, many sweet wines are creation of natural process, because of the high osmotic pressure yeasts would struggle and not finish fermentation fully. The modern thing is that nowadays we will stabilise the wine, so unwanted microbial activities doesn’t take place and ruin the wine. 🥂

@bradbellomo6896

4 ай бұрын

@@NoSediment Spontaneous fermentation is the low intervention way, but I live in Ohio where that won't work. Any wine I've made used commercial yeast and is bone dry. I agree spontaneously fermented European wine is often not as dry, but this the first time I've really thought about how modern lab yeasts are different. Thank you.

Hello Agnes, nice video again.. nonetheless U have forgitten the Italian gewurtzstraminer front alto Adige in Italy. This Is the tipical wine which i can only drink One glass. And no more..😁🤣😁🤣

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

I think Gewurztraminer has another problem: it tends to develop low acidity, and therefore it often tastes sweet without sugar. Also, it is a great grape that is difficult to make beautiful (requires skilful winemaker) and therefore there are many bad examples out there, which indeed can be difficult to finish even a glass. 😪

Yes various so called experts have attempted to " Shame me " over the years because i quite happen to like sweet wines , as far as i am concerned , its my personal taste , my personal enjoyment and at the end of the day , i never seen or met any of the " Ney sayers " in any chablis cave when i was a teenager and I have been in just about every one even by the tender age of 11 years old ! , People are just pratts , good for you to point out the bloody obvious , LOLOLOLOL ......... No Sugar ..... No fucking wine ! xxxx

@NoSediment

21 күн бұрын

I really don’t understand why people are trying to shame someone for enjoying the things they way they do. 🤷‍♀️ We are allowed to be different, this is the beauty of the world! Cheers! 🥂

Since I review wine, I thought I would chime in here. In my humble opinion sweet wines are created for a different purpose than dry wines. To me, sweet wines are for the pool or picnics. I have found that wineries who make sweet wines use that sweetness to cover for bad grapes or juice. Sugar covers up a lot of mistakes and the 2020 vintage of smoke tainted grapes from California will surely welcome that sugar as they can be sold as bulk wine to labels such as Cupcake & Barefoot among others. Others who might like this style of wine include those just coming into drinking age who don't understand what a grape varietal should taste like and, those looking to get wasted. It seems to me that wineries don't know how to regulate sugar in wine as they seem to overdue it big time and allow their wine making process to be less structured.

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

For a Desert Wine Guy You have very odd view on sweet wines. Some of the most age worthy and complex wines are sweet wines, and definitely not made to cover faults. There of course are low quality wines, but You can find them in all categories. 👌

@TheDesertWineGuy

3 ай бұрын

@@NoSediment Ahh... it's desert not dessert lol. I get that some people love sweet wines but for me they can keep them, give me a dry Cab and I am happy.

In all paths of life extremism never makes for good counsel. In an ideal world wine is an expression of terroir so if sweetness comes with that, I'll embrace it. With 30 years under my belt tasting wine from all over the world and with a collection of 45k bottles stashed away for a rainy day (AI uprising, mostly) wine will be sweeter and drier as the soil, tradition and human expertise will allow it. And there's wine's complement: food. Different wines go hand-in-hand with different foods. For a suckling pig or lobster you really need something very dry to cut all that sweetness so the "better" wine for that pairing is a very dry one. With the advent of clones even the varietal isn't significant any longer. Tempranillo/Ull de Llebre/Cencibel/Tinto Fino/Tinta del Pais/Tinta Roriz/Aragonez (same grape, different names as its employed at different regions all over the world) can be sweet and dry. When you compound the over 4000 different clones it can replicate almost every single varietal in the world with the right blend from different altitudes in the same region. If one single varietal can be so different, imagine all different ones all over the world through hundreds of thousands of clones... the options and endless... and we'll be here to taste them (almost) all ;)

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

Terroir is another controversial topic for me. 🤷‍♀️ But I do agree that we buy a specific wine (Riesling) to get a Riesling experience, therefore typicity is something to embrace. However, I also am against all wines tasting the same from one area or grape - and current trend with bone-dry styles we are loosing some of the diversity. 😳

@FlintIronstag23

3 ай бұрын

"In all paths of life extremism never makes for good counsel." Also "I have a collection of 45k bottles stashed away for a rainy day". If you really have 45,000 bottles of wine, I think you have contradicted your first statement.

sugar in wine is like cheese in culinary, it is a cheating tool. whatever you add cheese to, it is going to end up been tasty… thats why classic method sparkling wines are the lowest of the lows, when it comes to true expression of wines😅

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

😂😂😂😂 Let’s agree to disagree! 😅

@Ruirspirul

4 ай бұрын

@@NoSediment we can enjoy them immensely but there is nothing to argue that harvesting unripe grapes, fermenting and aging them in wood, keeping it on a lees and batonnaging it every two hours, later transferring to bottle, adding sugar and yeast and aging on that lees again for 9 years and when all this Frankenstein is decided that it had enough, they top it up with a sweet extract to “balance” out, can hardly be called a purist winemaking🤣

@NoSediment

4 ай бұрын

I don’t know what wine You are talking about. 🫣