Wine News: Sweet wine comeback entices California vintners
March 24, 2011
Dry chardonnays, cabernets and merlots dominate wine sales in the United States, but experts believe sweet wine could make a comeback, creating new opportunities for farmers and vintners.
People who enjoy soda, chocolate and candy are stepping up to the bar and ordering expensive sweet cocktails. Flavored martinis, spirits mixed with soft drinks or energy drinks, and fruit juice blends have become popular cocktail choices. California wine producers are beginning to realize consumers’ desire for refreshing, easy-to-drink libations isn’t being met by their wine.
“We haven’t been having an honest conversation about sweetness and what people like,” says master sommelier, wine consultant and author Doug Frost. “We’ve acted like sweet wine is what a beginner starts with and then you graduate to dry wines.”
Frost spoke at a conference sponsored by the University of California to explore new production and marketing options for sweet dessert and dried fruit wines.
Sommelier Tim Hanni, another conference speaker, has studied consumers’ beverage preferences, attitudes and behavior. Some people, he said, simply prefer sweet tastes, but the wine industry has disenfranchised these consumers.
“Go into a white tablecloth restaurant and order white zinfandel and see how you are treated,” Hanni said. “We are killing that potential market, calling them stupid, uneducated and immature.”
In fact, sweet wines have traditionally been considered the finest wines in the world, according to Darrel Corti, a wine and food expert who was inducted into the “Vintners Hall of Fame” in 2008. In antiquity, all the famous wines were sweet, he said. Sweet wines are more difficult to produce, but because of the higher sugar content, are more stable than table wine.
“In Lachish, in Israel, a pottery container bearing an inscription from the Iron Age (1800 BC) actually says, ‘wine made with dried black grapes,’” Corti said.
Sweet wine has a distinguished history in the United States. Around the time the country was founded, sweet Madeira wine was imported by the barrel from Madeira, a Portuguese island 350 miles west of Morocco. Madeira wine was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson, and it was used to toast the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, said wine importer Bartholomew Broadbent. It’s said that George Washington drank a pint a day and Betsy Ross sipped Madeira as she stitched the first American flag.
Since America was the primary market for Madeira, U.S. Prohibition nearly destroyed the country’s wine industry in 1920; it was never able to recover fully. Sweet wines – such as port, Sherry and sauternes – dominated U.S. wine consumption for 20 years after the 1933 repeal of Prohibition, according to historian James Lapsley of the UC Agricultural Issues Center and UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology. Its popularity peaked with 70 percent of the market share in 1952. But in the 1970s, table wine quality improved and sweet wine came to be perceived as old fashioned or “skid row,” Lapsley said. Since then, its popularity rode a downward slope, going as low as 2 percent of the wine market share in 2000. Lapsley, a former commercial winemaker, however, has high hopes for the future of sweet wine.
“There is a market for sweet wine,” he said. “But the wine must be high quality, needs to display personality, it needs to have soul.”
UC Cooperative Extension viticulture farm advisor in Mendocino County, Glenn McGourty, believes a small glass of good dessert wine is the best way to end a meal.
“I always encourage people to try it,” McGourty said. “A lot of people say they don’t like sweet wine. Then they try it and realize they do. People are usually pleasantly surprised.”
Wine lover’s choice – Yats Restaurant and Wine Bar – for the most impressive and practical wine list in the Philippines, over 2700 selections, enough to satisfy the most fastidious connoisseurs. Wine lovers and gourmand foodies from Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Korea and Malaysia dine at Yats Restaurant & Wine Bar when they visit Philippines and bring home some rare vintage wines too.
An excellent wine list is not just about 1st growth and cult Cabernet but a seemingly unending selection of affordable aged vintage wines that are not available anywhere else, not even in the best wine shops around town. Yats Restaurant has just that.
Visitors to Clark Philippines and Angeles City no longer suffer from lack of choices for places to eat out or wine and dine. Clark Philippines reviewed over 50 establishments and came up with three top choices in guide to best restaurant in Clark Freeport
Clark Philippines lists Top Three Restaurants in the Clark Freeport Zone and Angeles City areas of Philippines Pampanga province. Clark Freeport is a bustling new cosmopolitan city complete with its own Clark International Airport.
Topping the list is the famous fine-dining Yats Restaurant and Wine Bar located inside Mimosa Leisure Estate of Philippines Clark Freeport.
This restaurant in Pampanga Philippines is highly recommended by food critics and frequent diners in Manila as a place to wine and dine in Angeles City Clark Freeport Zone. Although it is a famous fine dining restaurant with an award winning 3000-line restaurant wine list, Yats Restaurant is also a popular restaurant for family with children. Aside from French Mediterranean haute cuisine, this restaurant also serves healthy food and the best vegetarian cuisines in the Philippines.
For comments, inquiries and reservations click on <a href=” http://www.yatsrestaurant.com/booking/index.html”>Click here for inquiry and reservations</a>
Restaurant@Yats-International.com
(045) 599-5600
0922-870-5178
0917-520-4401
Ask for Pedro and Rechel
<a href=”http://www.YatsRestaurant.com”>www. YatsRestaurant.com</a>
Getting to this fine dining restaurant of Angeles City Clark Freeport Zone Pampanga Philippines
How to get to this fine-dining restaurant in Clark Philippines? Once you get to Clark Freeport, go straight until you hit Mimosa. After you enter Mimosa, stay on the left on Mimosa Drive, go past the Holiday Inn and Yats Restaurant (green top, independent 1-storey structure) is on your left. Just past the Yats Restaurant is the London Pub.
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Yats Restaurant & Wine Bar
Mimosa Drive past Holiday Inn, Mimosa Leisure Estate,
Clark Freeport Zone, Pampanga, Philippines 2023
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3003C East Tower, Phil Stock Exchange Center,
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