Food and Drink

A quick guide to sweet wines and sweetness in wine

Let’s start by clarifying what a dry wine is. Wine is made by mushing up (technical jargon!) grapes. Yeast then eats the sugar in the grapes, turning it into alcohol. If all the sugar is eaten, the wine is ‘dry’ meaning it has no sweetness. This is different to the dry sensation tannins create in your mouth. Coming from grape skins, stalks, seeds and sometimes from oak barrels, tannins can help age wines and are mainly found in red wine - they are more a texture than a fl avour. If a customer asks for something ‘not too dry’ they normally mean something with low tannins. To make wine sweet you stop the yeast from eating all the sugar (for example by fi ltering it out) - the remaining sugar provides sweetness. Sugar or concentrated grape juice gets added sometimes, but usually with cheaper products. This is called chaptalisation (because in the wine world everything needs a fancy word!). Most confusion around HOW sweet wine is, arises from the numerous - not always helpful - terms in use. Some are ‘offi cial’ terms used in the trade, others have been invented to try and describe sweetness in layman terms. When faced with a wine list, “off-dry” means there is a little sweetness in white wine, whilst reds with some sweetness are called “medium sweet”. Why? No idea. You may hear other terms - semi-sweet, semi-dry or medium. It’s unnecessarily confusing, so most wine lists have a 1-5 scale of sweetness on them to help you! Within ‘sweet’ there is still quite a

range, so here are some clues. Lighter sweet wines are usually paler in colour with lower levels of alcohol. Icewines may be as low as 6%. Wines such as Rutherglen Muscat are deeply coloured and around 17%. Fortifi ed wines have spirit added to them and usually start at 20% ABV. There are many different styles of sweet or dessert wines, made in wildly different ways! Icewine involves letting grapes freeze on the vine, then crushing them to remove the water, leaving a concentrated and incredibly pure juice. Rutherglen Muscats are made in Australia in furnace-like sheds! Both are delicious but very different. The epitome of dessert wine making involves a form of grey rot! Botrytis Cinerea is a form of rot that coats grapes, gently piercing the skin and allowing water to evaporate. The grapes become raisin-like and have to be picked laboriously by hand to separate them from ‘healthy’ grapes. Unique conditions are needed - the vineyard must be misty in the mornings and bright and sunny in the afternoons. Many of the world’s most famous dessert wines are made this way - Sauternes and Tokaji for example.

Dave Anning

History Tour Tuesday 4th October

Take a step back into the Jacobean and Victorian era and explore the fascinating history of the Manor with proprietor Sue Murray.

10.30am: Arrival with Tea / Coffee Biscuits £35.00 per person

Slimming World’s Chicken Supreme

This comforting chicken supreme is packed with tender chunks of chicken and bacon – an easy chicken recipe that’s supremely satisfying.

Serves 2 Time: 35 minutes Ingredients

Bunch of asparagus, woody ends snapped off 1 red and 1 yellow pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped Low-calorie cooking spray 1 large onion, finely chopped 1 tsp garlic granules 2 skinless and boneless chicken breasts, thickly sliced 4 back bacon rashers, visible fat removed, roughly chopped 300g button mushrooms, cut in half 100g plain quark 100ml chicken stock 1 tsp mustard powder 1 tsp dried parsley

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 200°C/fan 180°C/gas 6. 2. Put the asparagus and peppers in a non-stick roasting tin. Spray with low-calorie cooking spray and roast for 15-20 minutes or until tender. 3. Meanwhile, spray a medium non-stick frying plan with lowcalorie cooking spray and place over a low-medium heat. Add the onion and garlic granules and stir-fry for 5 minutes, or until lightly browned. 4. Add the chicken, bacon and mushrooms and cook for a further 10 minutes, or until chicken is cooked. 5. Meanwhile, put the quark, chicken stock, mustard powder and a little seasoning into a large bowl. Mix really well to give a thick sauce. 6. Add the sauce to the chicken mixture, stir really well and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Sprinkle with the parsley and serve with a third of a plate of the roasted veg.

Bearslake Inn

EX20 4HQ

Sourton, nr Okehampton

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