If you don't like semi-sweet wine with food, serve it at a funeral
In Homer, wine is always sweet, though maybe the poet was comparing wine to kisses and kind words rather than to ripened pomegranates. Whatever Homer's taste, modern habits demand that sweet wines be concentrated and syrupy, with a rich honeyed nose and a long, slow, treacly slide down the soothed oesophagus. Semi-sweet wines, of the kind that appealed to my suburban aunts, are looked on as semi-serious, and almost no one has a use for them, either on their own or with a meal.
The most important victim of this prejudice is Vouvray, a wine produced north of the Loire, on 5,000 acres of the wide valley of the River Brenne. Long-standing custom allows the wines to emerge dry, sweet or demi-sec depending on the year. The principal grape used is the Chenin Blanc, sometimes supported by Arbois or Sauvignon, and the result, when fully sweet, will mature over many years, acquiring rich complexities of flavour - especially if the grapes have been selected for noble rot, and treated like the Sémillon grapes of Sauternes.
For the most part, however, Vouvray tends to finish the process of fermentation with a dose of sugar insufficient to pass as a "pudding wine", while sufficient to ruin its chances in a London wine bar. Its distinctive grassy aroma, mineral tingle and pronounced acidity suit it as an aperitif, which is a popular use for it in Vouvray. But the sweetness constantly draws attention to itself, promoting a cosy end-of-evening feeling incompatible with the normal forms of pre-prandial excitement.
The way to do justice to the Vouvray in Corney & Barrow's offer is to serve it with the first course of dinner. This is a refined wine, in which the sugar is fully integrated into the structure, like the ornaments into a classical façade. Its fluted mineral columns, with their flower-filled capitals, call out for a firm base of goat's cheese, tomatoes and olives. The sweetness offsets the salty food to the great advantage of both, and the citrous sting of the Chenin Blanc survives the tomatoes and whets the appetite for more. The only problem is that the wine agrees so well with this kind of food, that the bottle is soon finished and - perhaps because of the sweetness - you are about to embark on the second course in a condition that would not be condoned by your doctor. The solution is not to invite your doctor to dinner, while, in lieu of a second course, serving another plate of the cheese-and-tomato salad, and another bottle of Vouvray.
It is not only salty food that goes well with Vouvray. Just a few salt tears in the glass gives form to its sweetness, as we discovered when sipping our ration while pickling shallots. Even if you don't like semi-sweet wine with food, therefore, you can serve it to advantage at a funeral.
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