In ,

Raymond > typed:
> Hi guys
>
> Just one question:
>
> 1) How it is that DRY wines taste better than SWEET ones?


They don't necessarily.


> for every 100, only 2 or 3 people like the sweet style. I am
> sure you
> prefer the dry style as well...right?


Wrong. I like both. Which I drink at any given time depends on
what food I'm drinking it with. For my taste, dry wines go better
with most of what I eat, so I drink many more dry wines than
sweet ones. But that doesn't mean that I don't like sweet wines.

I think there are are three reasons for the perception that sweet
wines are inferior to dry ones:

1. The foods that most people drink wine with are usually better
with dry wines than whites.

2. I'm not sure what's available where you live (SG is Singapore,
right?) but here in the US, much of the sweet wine that's
available falls into two groups: the very cheap high-alcohol
stuff made to be sold to the wino who drinks this stuff from a
hip flask, and considerably more expensive stuff like vintage
port, trockenbeernauslese, and fine sauternes. Not to say there's
nothing in-between, but that there's comparatively little of it.

So the public's perception of sweet wine is based on what it
knows. It doesn't often know the expensive dry wines, because of
their price, and the cheap wines it has tasted are justly ignored
for being very poor.

3. Dry wine is marketed to the yuppies who are willing to pay
high prices for it. They are told that it's suave and
sophisticated to drink it. Night-train Express, Ripple, etc. is
marketed to the wino, who is told that he will get a big kick out
of it. Most people who can afford to choose prefer the former
image to the latter.

--
Ken Blake
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