A deliciously sweet rot

Unusual conditions can turn a Chardonnay into a dessert wine, writes Katherine McWhirter DO YOU think of Burgundian Chardonnay or Pouilly Fume as sweet wines? No? Nor do the local tasting panels that grant the official appelations to French wines. Quirkyweather conditions very occasionally create one-off sweet wines from these squeaky dry grape varieties, but they are considered by the authorities pas typique and must be sold as common vins de tables.

Untypical they may be, but these wines are exciting in their rarity - and as fine as any appelation wine, whatever the authorities say. That is certainly how Didier Daguenau sees it from his vineyards in Pouilly, just over the Loire from Sancerre. A picture on the back label of his sweet wine, of a hairy man making a rude French gesture at the tasting panel, illustrates his contempt.

Vines from this famous region of France annually turn out dry, aromatic Pouilly Fume, some of the very best and most expensive white wines available. But in the extraordinary hot summer of 1990, the last grapes Dagueneau picked had been struck by noble rot, and 5,000 bottles of wine turned out peachily sweet, soft and pungent.

Noble rot (the mould that brings about most of the world's greatest sweet wines) is nothing unusual on the Semillon grapes of Sauternes, the Riesling grapes of Germany and a few other susceptible varieties, given the right weather conditions. But Sauvignon Blanc grapes - the single variety of Sancerre and Pouilly Fume - are very prone to split as they ripen and develop, spoiling the wine.

Nevertheless, in Britain half-litre bottles of Dagueneau's "Maudit" (cursed wine) - "the most expensive vin de table in the world" - sell for £28.89 each through Anthony Byrne of Ramsey, Cambridgeshire. In 1991, to make a point, Didier Dagueneau mischievously made a deliberately "lousy wine" out of really disgusting, rotten grapes. It was awarded the appelation.

Didier Dagenau's "Maudit" was not the first sweet wine to be produced in the Sancerre region. Retired old winemakers in Sancerre and Pouilly-sur-Loire still discuss the merits of the sweet '47s and '21s. A couple of his neighbours also made accidental sweet wines during the freak vintages of 1989 and 1990.

But sweet Sauvignon Blancs are practically unknown. The only other one I've met is South African. Look out next May or June for a real scoop, provided all goes well in next March's vintage. The 1994 Stellenzicht Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc, from high, mountainous vineyards at Stellenbosch in South Africa, sold out at Safeway for a mere £3.49 per half bottle. It was an amazing, crisp and quirky combination of sweet honey and intense gooseberry (and actually a far more stunning wine than Dagueneau's exce llent "Maudit", at a fraction of the price).

Chardonnay is usually about as crispy-dry as Sauvignon Blanc. But Jean Thevenet of Domaine de la Bongran, just north of the Burgundian town of Macon, proves year after year that, given certain odd conditions, the Chardonnay too can develop noble rot. He gets no more sympathy from the Burgundian bureaucrats than Dagueneau got from his. Even the dry Chardonnays from Thevenet's near-organic family vineyards in the warm valley of the River Saone are usually rejected in local competitions as "pas typique" for Macon Blanc.

Thevenet prunes his vines hard, and harvests half as much as most of his neighbours. He picks late, well after most of the famous, cooler-climate Cote d'Or Burgundies are safe in the cellar. By that time, further south and what's more tucked in a warm micro-climate of their own, Thevenet's grapes are super-ripe, just developing the first hints of noble rot, and his dry wines end up with the rich intensity of white Burgundies with much more expensive names.

In the best years, he leaves some grapes longer. You'd pay £52 (Adnams of Southwold) for a bottle of his really sweet 1983 Cuvee Botrytis, made from intensely sweet and pungent grapes that have been really shrivelled and concentrated by the noble rot. Inhot but less exceptional autumns he produces what he calls his "Cuvee Speciale" Levroutee (levroute is local dialect for grapes in the first stages of noble rot). The 1985 Macon Clesse Quintaine, Cuvee Speciale Levroutee, Domaine de la Bongran (£16.80 Adnams) is delicious but really bizarre for anyone used to dry Chardonnay - sweet, yet with the rich, pineapple fruit and honey of ripe Chardonnay and a little tang of pungent noble rot. Visitors to the Thevenet cellar in Burgundy would find sweet bottlesfrom the 1987, 1989, 1990 and 1992 vintages.

There will even eventually be a sweetish Levroutee and super-sweet Botrytis wine from this 1994 vintage, which Thevenet declares "magnifique" despite the deluges that dashed the hopes of many Burgundians. Thevenet's healthy crop survived till the warm weather after the rains. These super-vins de table will sell for somewhere between 150F and 300F (£18-£36) per 75cl bottle.

Italian bureaucrats are not known for their broad-mindedness - many top-class Tuscan red wines have to be sold as vini da tavola because they don't fit the rules - but the growers of Soave have long had official blessing for their sweet wine. Recioto di Soave is made from specially selected grapes from the Classico (the best) Soave vineyards, which are dried in small trays for three to four months before being pressed and slowly fermented over months.

Not many growers bother with this fiddly process. But the result is a light and elegant sweet wine, much more delicate and less complex than nobly rotted sweet wines, but a delicious end to a meal nevertheless. Tesco has a lovely and very affordable one,a sweet, peachy, honeyed 1992 Villa Cerro Recioto di Soave (£3.99 for 50cl in selected stores), and Winecellars of Wandsworth (shop and mail order) sells a finer, subtly honeyed, floral and apricoty 1990 Le Colombare Recioto di Soave, Pieropan (£9.95 Adnams of Southwold, £10.39 per 50cl bottle, £14.99 per 75cl).

Down in Marsala country, on the dry west coast of Sicily, the bureaucrats strike again. Marsala of old (and these are ancient vineyards) was a dry, unfortified wine. Then Victorian Britons discovered it for both drinking and cooking. Big customers, they ordered it sweet and fortified and as cheap as possible - like their port and sherry. When, this century, the DOC (Denominazione di Origins Controllata) regulations were drawn up, they enshrined the status quo, and guaranteed the quality of a sorry bunchof wines.

Enter Marco De Bartoli, a young Sicilian who split off from his family, unable to persuade them to turn from the industrial style of Marsala. Now in his late forties, he is the only producer making a fine, dry, unfortified "Marsala" - and he is not allowed to call it by its name. Modern Marsala has to weigh in at a minimum of 18 degrees of alcohol, and even though De Bartoli uses only the best of the permitted grape varieties and gets them as ripe as possible on modern trellises instead of the shady local pergolas, his wines can't hope to reach more than a natural 16.5 degrees.

De Bartoli is the only one still using the traditional solera system - drawing off each year a small quantity of wine for bottling from the last in a series of chestnut barrels, which is progressively topped up from a barrel of slightly younger wine until the youngest barrel is topped up with new wine. The gradual blending makes for great complexity, and his amber-coloured Vecchio Samperi, Riserva 20 Anni Solera (£19.95 Winecellars, London SW18, from the shop or mail order) makes a stunning aperitif, very nutty, dry and concentrated, with a delicious salty tang. The 10-year-old (£16.89) and 30-year-old (£22.45) are also lovely wines.

Five years ago, having stuck to his dry, unfortified guns for years, De Bartoli decided he would show the others it was possible to make quality Marsala within the modern rules. His - £14.99 and £21.95 at Winecellars - were sweetened with top quality, super-sweet grape juice rather than the cooked and caramelised grape concentrate used by other Marsala producers, and used his Vecchio Samperi as a base. The official Marsala tasting panel threw them out. But the wines did finally get the DOC, once De Bartoli was able to prove that they really were Marsala. And De Bartoli was spared the temptation to make rude Italian gestures at the tasting panel.