Chardonnay & Pinot Blanc Sweet Classic

By Ágnes Németh

I would have never thought that I would ever campaign for sweet sparkling wines, yet I am doing it now. Wine consumption is decreasing globally, so any initiative that can grab new customers to the wine trade should be greeted. What is more, sweet sparkling wine still contains less sugar than other drinks: Garamvári Sweet Classic has 8 g sugar / serving (150 ml), while a glass of Coca Cola has 13.5 and a glass of Jack & Coke has 33 g of sugar! So, if you have sweet teeth, wouldn’t you opt for the natural choice, a drink made of grapes?

 

The wine drinkers’ evolution

Wine connoisseurs tend to despise those, who drink sweet wines (certainly I am not speaking about noble sweet wines like Tokaji Aszú here). It is true that the more experienced and educated someone’ palate is, the more likely he or she is to seek purity in wines, and sugar always masks the wine a little. I remember my first sparkling wine, a few sips at New Year’s Eve from my parents’ glass. It was “doux”, obviously, what is more, it was the only brand available then (in the 1980s) in Hungary from the former Soviet Union, it was called Sovietskoe Igristoe. Later the products of the largest Hungarian sparkling company called Törley were available in every supermarket, me and my siblings reached the legal drinking age (at least one of us) and we decided to give up our parents’ sweet choice, we chose a demi sec sparkling wine and we were very proud of ourselves. Then, as a young adult I started to choose ‘sec’ or ‘dry”, which can still contain up to 32 g sugar / litre. Then began my wine career as the editor of a wine magazine. I did not understand Champagne – what is all that buzz about that sour liquid? A few years later I considered myself the luckiest person to have the chance to drink Roederer for a whole day. Now I live in a town in Spain where everybody drinks brut nature sparkling wine, if by mistake I get brut, I find it too sweet.

At the same time, I became more tolerant with other preferences, especially because I often organize winery tours for “amateurs”, and yes, some of them ask for sweet sparkling wine. There is nothing wrong with them, they are just at the beginning of their wine path. Plus, sweet sparkling wine can work well with light, creamy, fluffy fruit desserts like strawberry meringue. A few years ago, I participated in a luxurious wine dinner by Freixenet, and the last course was a long aged sweet cava paired with the dessert – it was fabulous!