Guilty Pleasures

Residual Sugar – How many manufactured soft drinks are dry? No one will admit to liking sweet wines, so why is the UK’s number-one wine brand as sweet as a kitten in a basket, asks Tom Bruce-Gardyne

Whatever else you forget,” purred Leslie Phillips at TV audiences, circa 1980, “don’t forget the Black Tower.” The doorbell rings and he stands up in his black tie minus the trousers.

With its dark crock bottle in dimpled glass, the sweet German wine and its arch-rival, Blue Nun, once graced many a dinner party table. Apparently, though it may be a suburban myth, guests were sometimes asked not “red or white?” but “blue or black?”, such was the strength of the two brands.

According to consultant for Constellation Brands, Philip Goodband MW, 38% of the UK wine market in 1986 was classified as “medium sweet” or “sweet” thanks to massive sales of Lambrusco and Liebfraumilch. Leading brands like Black Tower and Blue Nun had well over 20 grams of residual sugar (RS) per litre.

“In the 1980s and 1990s we saw the rise and rise of Australia and other New World wines with their riper tastes, bigger alcohols and softer tannins. Coming from consistently warm climates there was less need for sugar. These reached the now more confident drinkers and thus drier wines became popular,” says Goodband.

Our tastes are supposed to evolve as we grow older, moving in a slow transition from say, Coke and alcopops at one end of the scale to Sancerre and Scotch at the other. If it happens to us individually, then it is tempting to assume it happens en masse – that as a nation of now some 30 million wine drinkers we have simply grown up. Or have we?

“When I think about sweetness in wine,” says Nicky Forrest of Phipps PR, who runs the generic campaign for German wines in the UK, “I ask how many manufactured soft drinks would you say are dry? I can’t think of any. Everything we drink is sweet, and there must be a reason for it. But then when it comes to wines you are deemed to be a ‘more sophisticated drinker’ if you like dry wines.”

But what do people really mean by “dry”? In an attempt to find out, Phipps ran a blind tasting in 1999. They assembled 100 “regular white wine drinkers” – what the trade might term “enthusiasts” – and asked them to rate nine wines in order of preference. Along with five Germans that included an off-dry Mosel Kabinett and a Spätlese, there was Jacob’s Creek Chardonnay, Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc and a Chablis from Brocard. The Kabinett came out on top, despite everyone stating they liked “dry or very dry” styles of wine.

Seeing is believing
In another experiment, Phipps asked punters to assess three “different wines” in different-shaped bottles. The one in a Bordeaux bottle was declared drier than the one in a flute, though the wines were, in fact, all the same, namely Kendermann’s Dry Riesling. For Nicky Forrest this proves “packaging can change the taste of a wine.”

Liz Stich, European and overseas export director at producer Reh Kendermann, agrees wholeheartedly: “The knowledge that we have in our minds influences the way we think it should taste. We taste with our eyes. We have a huge capacity to imagine things are different.”

On the broader point of whether we have lost our sweet tooth as a nation of wine drinkers, Stich thinks not. “If you look at a lot of Chardonnays on the market you are looking at 13% alcohol by volume with 10 grams of RS – that in my book is a sweet tooth.” She makes the valid point that perceived sweetness is not just about RS, but relates to levels of alcohol and mouthfeel. The latter is influenced by how much oak has been used, particularly American oak, and whether the wine has undergone malolactic fermentation like those old-style buttery Chardonnays from Australia. The other factor is balancing acidity. Here, Germany’s cool climate and longer ripening from bud-break to harvest works in its favour, especially for its hero grape Riesling. As a result, a new world Riesling can appear sweeter than a German one with similar levels of RS.

The fortunes of Black Tower in the UK make an interesting case study. During the 1980s the brand slipped to an all-time low of around 100,000 cases. “From 1992 onwards it has gone from strength to strength, “ says Stich, “and it’s the younger people that are now drinking Black Tower. Black is cool.” It received a hefty boost a few years ago when adopted by television’s Big Brother house, and that August sales through Asda jumped 85%.

The main wine, which accounts for 90% of Black Tower sales, is a Rivaner with currently 28 grams of RS. While this may have dropped four or five grams in the past decade, those seeking real sweetness now have Black Tower Rosé to get their lips round. This weighs in at 32 grams and is proving popular. “We sold so much over Christmas we had to put three containers on the road just afterwards,” says Stich. “But I think it’s not just a question of age and maturity. I think it’s a question of mood and occasion as well. If people are partying, they want something fun; and Black Tower Rosé is fun.”

In the pink
The wine’s success suggests that sweeter styles have not fallen out of favour so much as changed colour. Californian blush wines are big business – up 40% year on year according to the latest UK off-trade figures from ACNielsen. And with up to 35 or more grams of RS per litre, these wines are not “dry” by anyone’s standards.

The category was created quite by accident in 1973 by Bob Trincero, the winemaker at Sutter Home. To produce a more concentrated red Zinfandel, he bled off some free-run juice. Rather than throw it away, he made a rosé by stopping the fermentation at 9.5% abv, leaving a lot of residual sugar.

“It was very much looked down on by the Napa Valley fraternity [at the time],” says Andrew Chapman, Sutter Home’s European sales director. Since then it has been widely copied. White Zin is the biggest-selling varietal of Blossom Hill, the UK’s number one wine brand. It boasts 32 grams of RS and has been growing at 28% in the latest MAT figures from ACNielsen.

Chapman is convinced that “white Zin’s competition is not wine; it is other alcoholic beverages and RTDs. If RTDs have hit a wall, I believe white Zin has been taking up a lot of that slack.” How many of its fans go on to discover mainstream wines or stick with drinks that are equally sweet is impossible to tell. This goes to the heart of a philosophical debate of whether wine should reach out to the widest possible audience, or wait for the audience to come to it.

You could argue that the wine trade had been missing a trick for some time; that by failing to embrace the sweet-toothed community, it allowed RTDs to steal potential sales from people who would have drunk Liebfraumilch in the past. Bailey’s launched Bailey’s Minis as a means to break free from the drinks cupboard and get into the fridge. In this way it became a ready alternative to a glass of, say, Jacob’s Creek every time the fridge-owner opened the door and felt like a drink.

Today, the Californians are fighting back and have now cornered the market in everything sweet and pink. “We do have an increased offering of rosé styles from Australia,” says Phil Reedman, Tesco’s man on the ground Down Under, “but nothing at the levels of RS found in US wines. Australian winemakers, as a rule, are favouring drier styles.” He reckons sugar levels have dropped slightly for the own-label wines he looks after, but admits perceptions of sweetness may have increased along with alcoholic strength.

Image problems
As Goodband points out, the formula for white Zin “is strikingly similar to Liebfraumilch” even though the low alcohol and high sweetness is caused by stopped fermentation rather than added grape juice. The big difference is clearly one of image. While California conjures up bronzed, laid-back people and a Beachboys’ soundtrack, Germany evokes something else. Also, German wines have been tainted by the low-quality, industrial production of the past, a problem that persists in the supermarket bargain basement. Thanks to the racks of sub-£2 a bottle Liebfraumilch, “sweet” means “cheap” on the German section of the shelves.

“What consumers failed to realise is that Germany makes some of the best off-dry wines in the world, and that when they taste these wines blind they really love them,” says Forrest. Unfortunately people do not buy wine blind and are much influenced by peer pressure, as Keith Lay discovered when he became marketing director at Ehrmanns in 2001. His top priority was Blue Nun, and at the BBC Good Food Show he found people sidling up to his stand, looking furtive and muttering, “Got anything sweet?” as if asking for a top-shelf magazine.

Self-deception
Over on the Sutter Home stand it was a similar story, only this time people would ask “What have you got in the way of a dry white?”. At first Chapman would offer them Chardonnay until he realised what they really wanted. Happiness was a glass of white Zin – “Oh, that’s lovely!” they’d declare.

If this shows how the words “sweet white wine” have become a term of abuse – with the honourable exception of Château Yquem – Chapman blames the industry for being snobbish. “But the class structure in the wine trade is changing; it’s much less middle class now.” Come the revolution the old guard will be swept aside on a populist tide.

For now, the labels of Californian blush wines do not mention their sweetness because they don’t need to. People buying a bottle whose colour is fluorescent, bubble-gum pink know what to expect.

The two biggest sellers in the Blossom Hill range are a red and a white blend with an RS of eight to nine grams per litre. In the past you might have called them “off-dry” or “medium”, though you won’t find such words on the label. New world brands tend to prefer terms like “ripe”, “rich” and “fruity”.

Over in Germany, Reh Kendermann is less coy. Five years ago, it produced Kendermann’s Medium for a UK pub chain to appeal to mainly women who disliked dry wine and were not afraid to admit it. Sales have been so good that a move into the off-trade is imminent.

One factor that may play a part in all of this is health. Stich argues, “People are bound to think ‘I’ve got to drink dry wine because it’s good for my figure’”. Maybe some wine drinkers view the sweeter styles as an indulgence like one of those “naughty but nice” sticky buns. Yet very few consumers, one imagines, actually understand what gives a wine its calories. As Stich says, “If you told people that a wine at 8.5% abv with 35 grams of RS was less fattening than a dry Chardonnay at 13.5% abv, they simply wouldn’t believe you.”

The more things change …
This is where Weight Watchers comes in with its points system. Kendermanns supplies two of its branded wines through Asda and Tesco. Interestingly, the Weight Watchers website urges red wine lovers to shun Australia, the US and Chile: “Without the blockbuster ‘ripe’ taste of New World sun, Old World wines are more aromatic, delicate and perfect for pairing with food or sipping without.”
Not that Constellation Brands appears worried. “It’s a niche,” says Goodband.

“Whether it’s a niche that turns into a trend is anyone’s guess.”  

Back to the main issue of where the mass market lies in terms of sweetness, it may be that tastes have never really changed. But if wine drinkers are becoming more confident and less hidebound by past baggage, then people
like  Stich could be onto something big.

“I think Germany has a huge potential, which somebody like Tesco is going to discover one day and really get behind it.” If so, it will be reaching out to a new generation of wine drinkers who were not even born when Leslie Phillips dropped his trousers for Black Tower. 

Sugar levels
Sugar contents (not RS) grams per litre:
• Regular Coke: 106
• Sunny Delight Tangy Original: 112.5

Only trace elements of RS exist in a bottle of Scotch. With RTDs if you mixed rum and cola in alcopop proportions to give the same alcohol level (about 6% abv) then the cola would give you about 80-90 grams/litre

In terms of calories per unit of alcohol (estimates):
• 1/2 pint of lager = 115 calories
• single measure of spirits (25ml) = 52 calories
• small glass of wine = 80 calories

db March 2006