Rich & Fruity semi-sweet wine (Steinweiler Spatlese)

Member Name: KnightOwl

Product:	Steinweiler Spatlese
Date:	14/06/02 (197 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Plenty of character

Disadvantages: May be too sweet for some

I generally drink more red wine than white, but I've always been a dry-white-wine-gal, generally the drier the better as long as it packed a bit of fruit. Recently however, in a pub which had run out of the dry variety, I was forced to try a medium sweet. Rather to my surprise, I really enjoyed it.

Mulling this over at home later, I wondered if perhaps I'd become a bit blinkered. I used to turn my nose up at the sweeter varieties, thinking they were somehow less "valid" than a good dry vintage with a sting in its tail and a granny-smith type of frutiness. Maybe I'd been wrong.

I went on a bit of a medium-sweet hunt, but fairly quickly came to the conclusion that maybe I hadn't been so wrong after all! Most of the ones I tried were fruity, yes, but lacked much in the way of what I'd call character. You might as well have been drinking grape juice with a slug of vodka. Finally though, I happened to pick up this one in Tescos - mainly because it was one of only a few varieties in the chiller cabinet, and I was planning to serve it fairly soon. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.

The wine is slightly on the sweeter side of medium, with plenty of fruit. It's rich and kind of biscuity (is that a word??) with a sort of buttery after-taste. It's great for drinking on it's own, and the bottle says it goes well with fresh fruit salad or pastries - I haven't tried that, so I can't comment, but I did think it went wonderfully well with a piece of blue Stilton last week! The flavours worked really well. For anyone else wanting to branch out into something sweeter, I'd recommend this as a worthwhile place to start.

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