Sweet Muscat wines, produced from a wide variety of Muscat grape varieties, can be found in many different styles throughout Italy. Sweet wines crafted from Moscato Bianco (Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains) are found in only about half of Italy’s wine-growing regions—and even then, usually in just a single DOC. We tasted a sweet Muscat wine from Liguria: the 2024
Klaus gave me the sweet wine, which he has as always carefully selected to match the dessert, – just as he had done on our last visit. This time: a Greek sweet wine from the 2014 vintage, called Pollios Oinos, produced by the Anatolikos Vineyards winery. This winery, which continues a program begun in 2000 to revive a famous ancient vineyard, was founded in 2005 in the Thracian town of Avdira.
The organically certified winery is run by the two brothers Marios and Sakis Nikolaidis.
Sárga Muskotály, also known in this country as Yellow Muscat, is a grape variety permitted for production in Tokaji. It gives the wine a strong aroma and a balanced acidity.
Most sweet Tokaji wines are aged for at least two years. Since the 1990s, there has been an increasing number of Tokaji wines that have been matured reductively, i.e. wines that are matured largely without contact with atmospheric oxygen. These wines are already 12 – 18 months after the harvest on sale and are mostly offered as Late Harvest (in Hungarian: Késői Szüretelésű).
It was a very generous birthday present from Hans, Szepsy’s Tokaji Esszencia 1999, which we tasted together with other friends a few weeks ago. Esszencia, not Aszú Escenzia, is the top category of sweet Tokaji wine. You can see that from the fact that it is made from the so-called flow must of the grapes, which is created by the own weight of the grapes, which are in steel
Pantelleria is best known for its capers, which are said to be the best in the world. Belonging geologically to the African continent, the Italian island, also known as the Island of the Winds, is only around 50 km east of Tunisia, but around 100 km south of Sicily.
The sweet wine Prošek, pronounced Proschek, is rare in Germany under this name, because Croatia has forgotten to protect this product name with its joining of the EU. Although not to be confused with Prosecco, the name Prošek can only be used in Croatia because of its similarity to Prosecco.
The name Piamater is somewhat unusual for a sweet wine, especially for me as a neurobiologist, who knows Pia Mater as the innermost cerebral membran. Less unusual today is that two wineries together produce one wine, in this case the oenologist Alicia Eyaralar from the winery Tandem in Navarre, together with the Andalusian winery Dimobe.
Moscato Rosa del Trentino – called in South Tyrol Rosenmuskateller – a grape variety that is found almost exclusively in northern Italy and especially in South Tyrol, does not come from Sicily, as often claimed in Italy, but most likely from Dalmatia. In this respect, the synonym of the variety Moscato Rosa del Trentino is a bit misleading, as far more than 85% of the approximately 100 hectares of the Italian Rosenmuskateller vineyards are in South Tyrol. Outside Italy you … Read more ...
In Massandra, a town near Yalta in the Crimea, wine is produced for more than 240 years, especially sweet wine, in a variety of styles, many of them copies of well known wine styles like Madeira, port, sherry or Tokay and Sauternes. The Winery Massandra, in its present form was commissioned by Tsar Nicholas II at the end of the 19th century in order to provide his royal hosehold, especially in his nearby summer palace Livadia with wine and sparkling wine.
Hans had invited to a wine tasting and announced to offer only one or two small courses – however, there were much more courses. Hans just returned from a journey through Roussillon and the Rhone Valley, where he had bought a variety of Vin Doux Naturel. For the dessert, a chocolate cake with honey olive jelly, he opened some of them.