Plageoles’ Vin d’Autan 2005

Tarn in Gaillac from Didier Descouens — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Gaillac is located in the center of the southwestern French wine-growing region of the same name, from which the sweet wine tasted this time comes. The wine-growing region north-west of Toulouse, on the Tarn – with 9,000 hectares of vineyards and around a third of which are appellations – is characterized above all by its often regionally autochthonous grape varieties and the range of wine styles.

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Do sweet wines make one fat?


Petis Tours und Süßweine harmonieren ausgezeichnet,

Without a reason, I would not have come up with this question so quickly. Sure, wine has alcohol and it has calories, as we all know. It was the first time I heard that someone refuses a glass of sweet wine for dessert on the grounds that it might make fat because of its calories. I had never tried to get information about calories in sweet wine or wine. So I googled “calories in wine” and on a discounter’s website found the information that the alcohol content (in %) multiplied by 5.5 gives the number of kliocalories per 100 ml of wine. According to a table on this page, a … Read more ...

Cannellino di Frascati – sweet wine of Lazio

Villa Aldobrandini Frascati © Narcisse Navarre Pixabay

Who has never heard of Frascati or maybe even drunk it. I knew Frascati from a long time ago, when it was offered almost exclusively in 1 1/2 or 2 liter bottles alongside the red, sweet Lambrusco.When I was looking for sweet wines that I had never tasted before, I came across the Cannellino di Frascati DOCG on the website of a well-known German mail-order wine company. I ordered it, without a moment’s hesitation, because of my acquaintance with the often slightly residual sweet Frascati wines in my late youth.

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PX-Sherry Bertola – herbal sweetness


Courtyard Bodegas Diez-Mérito

Pedro Ximénez Sherry is one of the sweetest wines in the world. Only the Pedro Ximénez grape variety is used for its production. For this purpose, the overripe grapes are dried in the sun after the harvest, which not only increases the sugar content, but also the aromas and at the same time the acidity. Moscatel sherry is made the same way. These two wines are so-called

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Floral Riesling Kabinett from Wolfer Sonnenlay

© Chris Flower Pixabay

Konstantin Weiser and Alexandra Künstler started with leased 1.8 hectares in the Enkircher Ellergrub. Today they cultivate 4.6 hectares, exclusively Riesling, in Enkirch these are Ellergrub, Zeppwingert and Steffensberg sites, and besides the Trabener Gaispfad, Wolfer Sonnenlay and some smaller steep plots

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Classic chocolate companion – Maury Grenat


I can seldom resist the naturally sweet French Vin Doux Naturel wines, this is only partly due to the wonderful holiday memories of Roussillon, the region where 80% of Vin Doux Naturel is produced and – due to its omnipresence there – also consumed in my opinion. I think my first encounter with a Banyuls Rimage as companion of a chocolate dessert was probably much more formative. That was most probably the reason why we chose this wine style of Vin Doux Naturel for the chocolate mousse.  A  style with very fruity notes due to

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Apasionado Dulce de José Pariente

© Bodegas José Pariente

Due to its naturally high acidity and its susceptibility to botrytis, Sauvignon Blanc is excellently suited for sweet and noble sweet wines – and is in the well-known sweet wine Sauternes an important part, albeit smaller in quantity. It is therefore not surprising that sweet Sauvignon Blanc wines can be found in many countries. We tasted a sweet wine from the Rueda region in Spain, the Apasionado Dulce 2015 from Bodegas José Pariente.

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Australian Semillon – “Special sale dessert wine”

The winery De Bortoli was founded 90 years ago by Vittorio De Bortoli, who emigrated from the Italian Treviso to Australia. The winery became known beyond Australia only in the 1980 years with the Noble One Botrytis Semillon, produced in the family-owned winery Bibul in Riverina. Today, the De Bortoli family own wineries with around 820 hectares of vineyards in the Heathcote, Hunter Valley, King Valley, Riverina, Rutherglen and Yarra Valley.

The tasted wine, the Family Reserve Semillon 2016 by De Bortoli, I had discovered at Aldi as an special sale gourmet wine for Christmas and taken away. The Semillon variety, the backbone of Sauternes, … Read more ...

Matured by the Foehn – Jurançon


© La Cave de Gan Jurançon
© La Cave de Gan Jurançon

Around 1,500 km separate the foothills of the Alps south of Munich and Jurançon in France, but despite this distance, both have a climatic similarity: the Foehn, a dry warm wind from the mountains, always blowing from the south. In wine-growing areas north of the Alps, in the autumn, the grapes intended for the production of a sweet wine can dry and rosinate in the vineyard on the vine, naturally concentrating the sugars. A well-known example of a sweet wine that benefits from the Foehn is a Flétri from Valais.

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