A spoonful of sugar with my red wine please

The sweet loving wine drinker should be encouraged not lampooned according to a recent report by Tim Hanni MW and Virginia Utermohlen MD into how people taste food and wine differently. The results show that while many people think big red wines are the nirvana, many people prefer lower alcohol wines that are sweeter. Often these people have been derided by the wine trade as being unsophisticated, but Tim Hanni claims these drinkers have been put off wine and tend to drink beer and cocktails at home. He claims that if sweeter wines become more acceptable and more available it is an opportunity for wine makers.

Sweet drinkers are often stuck with the likes of Blue Nun and Black Tower, but more sophisticated drinks could entice them into drinking wine more regularly. In Tim’s work young ladies are the most likely to prefer sweet wines although it is not a function of maturity but simply genetics and the wine trade is missing out by discriminating against semi-sweet wines and dismissing them as cheap plonk.