Sweet Wines
2016 Gold: 8 Silver: 10 Bronze: 2 Commended: 5
2015 Gold: 7 Silver: 10 Bronze: 2 Commended: 6
Giving a team of tired sommeliers a flight of stickies at the end of the day is rather like giving knackered children a bag of Haribo for finishing their homework: it’s amazing how quickly jaded palates perk up once there’s a bit of sugar involved.
And some of these wines were outrageously sweet – the ice wine flight, in particular, should probably have been sponsored by Colgate – but happily the sugar was backed up with lots and lots of complexity and, for the most part, balance.
There are a plethora of amazingly good wines here across the medals – and they’re not always expensive either. The Critics' Choice-winning Mena Hweg (no, we don’t know how to pronounce it either) was an extraordinarily lovely bottle of almost ethereal beauty at a stand-out price. The team at Sommelier’s Choice have a little cracker there.
Sure, these wines aren’t necessarily easy to sell themselves, and you might need to take a hit on the margin, but as several of our tasters pointed out, even a glass of sticky at the end of the night can be viewed as a nice added bonus for you and a memorable extra for your customers.
FROM THE TASTING TEAMS
‘The thing about sweet is that at the highest level while we understand the technicality, the public doesn’t know how low the yields are and what it takes to make them. Once it is tied to something, people get it. If someone comes to you and suggested this cheese or pudding with that – that is what people want.’ Martin Lam, team leader
‘By the bottle, it’s only the cheapest or the most expensive that sells. You always have to take a hit on the margin with sweet wine, but it’s an extra sale.’ Jonathan Kleeman, Social Eating House
‘Very few restaurants outside of London would be able to list the Icewines.’ Claire Love, consultant
‘We tend to sell wines on the lighter side like Riesling, because it works with Chinese food a bit better.’ Tobias Brauweiler MS, Hakkasan Group
‘People tend to finish the meal with a whisky. To sell sweet wines, the only way is to talk about matches with a dessert; they need to be quoted on the dessert menu.’ Stefano Pirondi, Bread Street Kitchen
‘A gorgeous, sexy, sumptuous flight, brimming full of quality. If you’re in the right place you can sell Icewines, but they’re expensive.’ Robert Mason, Cheese at Leadenhall
“The ice wines were delicious. A treat. Such wonderfully made wines. We sell a couple, but because of the price points they don’t move much.” Sunaina Sethi, JKS Restaurants
“To sell sweet wines, you’ve got to do staff training, but you get the rewards from it.” Charles Van Wyk, FJB Collection
“They’re not cheap, but there’s quality behind them. The benefit is that you can open them and keep them in the fridge for days.” Olivier Marie, team leader
FOOTNOTE: This section includes botrytis and non-botrytis wines, ice wine and red sweet wines, but nothing fortified. While prices shown on these pages relate to the size of bottle on sale, for judging purposes prices were given for the 75cl equivalent volume.