Pudding wines
Just desserts
Petronella Wyatt
IT is customary these days to assume that a guest will, uncomplainingly, eat their pud- ding with the remains of the claret or Bur- gundy. This is a mean view of the world, as well as an unsatisfactory one. But the pud- ding wines department, as Hugh Johnson has observed, seems sometimes to be a home for lost causes.
There are a whole series of sweet wines that populated the tables of Edwardian and Victorian dinner parties and which are now not only relegated to the back shelves of off- licences but, worse still, are regarded as cooking wines. Consider Marsala, invented by the British in the 18th century as an alter- native to sherry. It had its moment when Nelson ordered 500 butts of it for the fleet and grew to extreme popularity in the mid- 19th century. But where is the stuff now? Occasionally a small spoonful is used to make a frothy Italian pudding called zabaglione. Yet Marsala with its dark, throaty taste is a nice accompaniment for dark berries or anything containing caramel. It has a taste not unlike old sherry with some of the butterscotch flavour of Madeira.
The universal place of pilgrimage for con- noisseurs is Château Yquem, whose labels for some reason call it Château d'Yquem. Many believe that it is to pudding wines what Krug is to champagne. One hundred and fifty pickers harvest the grapes one by one. It is said to be the only place where all the wine-making machinery is made of wood, so that no metal ever comes into con- tact with the wine in case it should affect the taste. Such is the perfectionist streak of the Lur Saluce family, which owns it, that in 1964, when the grapes were deemed slightly under par, the vineyard refused to produce any wine. The late Marquis de Lur Saluces drank Yquem with foie gras. It remains, however, the ideal pudding wine. The most satisfactory way of drinking it is with a sim- ple peach. Anything too complicated or strong sullies the wine's taste. The wine should be served very cool but not quite refrigerated. On no account allow it to be polluted by lumps of ice.
If your budget fails to run to Yquem, Ger- man sweet wines are a workmanlike substi- tute. They are not strong in alcohol. Purists prefer to drink a good Moselle on its own but it goes exceptionally well with chocolate mousse or anything with a dark, woody flavour. The only drawback of Moselle is that, like the bombastic Kaisers who drank it, it is a trifle one-dimensional. What hits the tip of your tongue is what you get; there is no revelatory aftertaste.
Tokay belongs in history as the favourite dessert wine of a world that thought dessert wine the height of gastronomic pleasure. The Habsburg court of the Holy Roman Empire, the Russian imperial court and the nobility of Poland valued their wine as a nectar and kept private vineyards. The great- est Tokay is Tokay Eszencia, which should really be translated as Quintessence. Tokay lies in easternmost Hungary where they have a theatrical way of making it, piling the grapes on a grating or sieve. Their own weight squeezes out Tokay Eszencia, a dark brown, translucent liquid with a nose like a gently melting praline. It is stronger than Yquem and is thus a splendid complement to the more wintry or heavier type of pud- ding. The first time I drank it was with Gun- del palacinta, a Hungarian speciality involving pancakes and hot chocolate sauce. After dinner a gypsy band played Lehar. That's what pudding wines do for you. With a claret you hear Macbeth, but with Yquem or Tokay it's lilting operetta all the way.
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