LCBO Food & Drink Holiday 2022

Don’t be so quick to walk past your store’s selection of sweet wines.

From Moscato to Icewine to port, they have a lot to offer—

complexity, versatility and flavour. Roll them into your menus,

find out how to serve them and enjoy them to the max.

F or most of the last 500 years, sweet wines were the cat’s meow. Cold north ern countries craved the rich, sugary flavours of Commandaria from Cyprus, sweet sherry sack, Mediterranean muscats and Malvasia. Later, they went to enormous lengths to ensure supplies of port and Madeira, Sicilian Marsala and Greek Mavrodaphne, unctuous Rieslings from the Rhine and Constantia from Cape Town. Dry wine was fine, but high society on both sides of the Atlantic had a sweet tooth that lasted right up to the 20th century. Three “p”s put paid to much of it—phyllox era (bugs that wreaked havoc on Europe’s vineyards), Prohibition (which destroyed legal sales) and politics (revolutions and wars have a way of changing old habits). Many of the great sweet and fortified wines almost disappeared, but one or two, most notably port, got their marketing act together. Others are still working out how to rebuild their status. Today, the main hope for their survival lies in the curios ity and enthusiasm of the millennial generation. They are showing them selves to be treasure-seekers, eager to experience oldmasterpieces and taste what all the fuss was about. They’re also behind the trend for recreating century-old cocktails—recipes that made full use of sweet and fortified wines, valuing their complexity, their sweetness (no need for simple syrup) and the fact that they have less than half the alcohol of spirits. One more plus—when you consider their qual ity, these wines offer incredible value for money. THE SWEET By JAMES CHATTO Photography by DARREN KEMPER SPOT

PROP STYLING BY SHELLY SHNIER

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