When it comes to wine, sweet is the new black

WAY BACK in the Paleolithic era of American Wine Drinking — a time coinciding with leisure suits, fern bars and the Carter administration — sweet wines ruled. People loved their cheap Mateus and Blue Nun and Andre Cold Duck. Then, all of a sudden, everyone got all sophisticated and savvy and demonstrated this by eschewing sweet for dry. Basically, you were a moron or a rube if you liked sweet wine. Or at least that’s what we were told. I know something like this happened in our home when I was growing up. As a kid, I vaguely remember a moment when my parents started opening bottles of Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay. As I got older, I was made to understand that sweet wines were vaguely embarrassing. Years later, as I delved deeper into wine, I realized of course that all those bottles of Sutter Home and Kendall Jackson still had just a little residual sugar.