Why don't we drink dessert wine?
How to adopt the dessert-wine mentality. And more, in this week's Drinking with Esther newsletter
Esther Mobley July 11, 2019
Philip Togni and his daughter Lisa stands among their family wine barrels, Tuesday March 11, 2014, at the Philip Togni Winery in St. Helena, Calif. After over 60 years of making wine Philip has settled atop Spring Mountain, outside St. Helena, where he still makes Cabernet very much in the style of the legendary 1969 Chappellet. He is believe to be one of the greatest American wines ever.
Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle
Dessert wine is one of those things that wine aficionados love in theory but not in practice. Sure, we all know that Sauternes, Madeira, Tokaji and German TBA can be some of the greatest wines in the world. But how often do we actually drink them?
This question came up on a recent visit to Philip Togni Vineyard, on Napa Valley's Spring Mountain. I visited the Togni family, of course, because I admire their Cabernet Sauvignons, which I consider to be some of the most elegant, long-lived and distinctive in California. I certainly didn't expect to feel so moved by the fortified sweet wine from their label Ca'Togni, the ancient name of the family's hometown in Switzerland — a wine which soon, sadly, will cease to exist.
Ca'Togni is made from the Black Hamburg grape, otherwise known as Black Muscat. It all began when Philip Togni was planting grapes at his property in the 1980s. In addition to the obvious Cabernet, the thought occurred to him: "Why don't we make something for just ourselves to drink?" He thought of planting Muscat Canelli for dessert wine, but Black Hamburg was what the UC Davis nursery had available. He planted half an acre.
As it turned out, Black Hamburg has a colorful history, originating in Togni's native England, where in 1768 a landscaper named Capability Brown cultivated it in George III's indoor conservatory, Hampton Court. It traveled to South Africa, where Klein Constantia fashioned it into a sweet wine that earned worldwide renown. Incredibly, there are 311 acres planted in California today (more than I'd expected!), most of those in Tulare County, though the variety's most important contemporary stronghold is probably in India, where it is known as Gulabi, "rose" in Hindi.
That's an apt description, because the Ca'Togni wine smells like roses to an almost uncanny degree: like burying your nose in a pile of fresh, soft, impossibly fragrant petals. Lisa Togni, Philip's daughter and the current winemaker, would pick the grapes in November once they'd gotten extra sweet, then halt the fermentation partway through with a neutral brandy, as is done in Port. The resulting wine is around 14% alcohol with 350 grams/liter of sugar. Plenty sweet, to be sure, but certainly not cloying, and despite the grapes' long hang time the flavors are perfectly fresh — pert and bright, as opposed to the stewy-fruit notes that often burden late-harvest wines.
But there will be no more Ca'Togni. The vines proved so susceptible to Pierce's Disease that the Tognis decided to rip out all their Black Hamburg in 2017. By that point, the original half acre had dwindled to just a quarter acre. Earlier attempts at expanding the acreage had fallen victim to disease, too.
By Shanna Farrell
If you see your bartender wearing this pin, it means they...
Mama, Oakland's new wine-focused, sub-$30 red-sauce joint,...
Tablas Creek just planted a grape you've never heard of. But...
Bryant Estate legal fight offers glimpse into 'cult'...
And perhaps it's just as well. "People don't make wine like this anymore," says Philip Togni, because people don't really drink it. Despite his original impetus for planting Black Hamburg — to have something for himself to drink — he admits that he hardly ever partakes of dessert wine at the end of a meal anymore either.
I extract a similar confession from Andrew Quady, who has been making Black Muscat, as he prefers to call it, into a Port-style wine called Elysium at his Quady Winery since 1983. "We don't drink a lot of our own wine," he laughs. "Once in a while, for special occasions, when we're having dessert."
In the '80s, Quady says, he could barely keep his fortified sweet wines in stock. But that changed over time, especially when the 2008 recession hit. "Restaurant sales dropped, dessert sales dropped, and our sales dropped a lot," he says. These days, the success of his 100,000-case winery is driven mostly by its low-alcohol, frizzante-style Moscatos, while the heavier sweet wines like Elysium are largely exported to "countries where the public really does still appreciate a glass of dessert wine after dinner." Elysium and its white counterpart, Essencia, account for only about 5% of business.
I'm as guilty as Quady and Togni. Bottles of Sauternes and Tokaji gather dust on my wine shelves at home; I always swear I'm going to open them up with dessert after a nice meal, but it's been years since I've done it. I'm a little more amenable to opening Madeira, another favorite sweet wine, since it will keep — in the fridge, stopped up with a cork, that is — for many months. (Madeira is also excellent for deglazing a pan that held, say, pork tenderloin, but forget I said that. Just drink it!)
But tasting that achingly beautiful Ca'Togni in that Spring Mountain cellar recently, hearing that the vines had been removed, I had a Joni Mitchell moment. Don't it always seem to go? Although I may not be likely to induct regular sweet-wine consumption into my daily routine anytime soon, I'm vowing to try to adopt the dessert-wine mentality: to slow down, to pause a little more at the end of a meal before rushing up to do the dishes, to let the conversation linger. And then maybe, occasionally, to indulge in a little Muscat.
You'll still be able to find Ca'Togni for a few more years, since the Tognis release the wine after five years of aging. A quick look around Internet wine stores shows that there are some reasonably priced older vintages still available, too (a 2002 for $40/375ml at K&L, for instance). But if you're curious about just dipping your toes into Black Muscat, I recommend trying the more affordable Quady Elysium 2015 ($22/750ml), which likewise carries the variety's unmistakable rose-petal aroma. At 15% alcohol, it's a little easier to throw back than your typical fortified, Port-style wine, and it has a good backbone of acidity to counter the sweetness. Try it on its own, or, as Andrew Quady suggests, add some sparkling wine for a delicious take on a Kir Royale.
Bartender Jared Murray, left, and bar director Nicolas Torres wear Pin Project pins during a shift at True Laurel in the Mission.
Photo: Josie Norris / The Chronicle
• We have an excellent story this week from local cocktail historian Shanna Farrell about the complicated relationship between bartenders and alcohol. A group of Bay Area bar professionals have now launched the Pin Project: They wear a small pin while they're working to signal that they're not drinking right now. "The conversation around sobriety is usually black and white — all or nothing — with no middle ground," Shanna writes. "But the bartending community may be at the forefront of redefining that."
• Longtime San Francisco sommelier David Lynch (and James Beard Award-winning wine writer!) is in Robb Report, writing about what's wrong with most restaurants' by-the-glass lists.
• My friend Dan brought a bottle of Haus aperitif to a Fourth of July picnic last week, apparently not realizing that he was carrying the new "Everlane of booze," according to Leslie Pariseau in Punch. I found the liqueur tasty, reminiscent of St. Germain. (I wrote about an earlier iteration of maker Woody Hambrecht's vermouth back in 2017.)
• Cyrus had a great seven-year run in Healdsburg. Now, seven years after the legendary restaurant closed, chef Douglas Keane has said he's finally giving up on reviving it.
• Governor Gavin Newsom just signed a bill that changes the definition of beer in California to account for ingredients like fruit, the Sacramento Bee reports. (Currently, you have to have a wine license to use fruit in the fermentation.) The new law feels like an acknowledgment that fruit beers and wine-beer hybrids are becoming a larger part of the craft beer scene.