The Sweet Truth

You need to drink more sweet wines.

Wines that contain palpable sugar levels.

You have to do this.

Maybe you associate sweet wine with dessert, with sugary indulgence. You could not be further from the truth. Sweet wine’s greatest utility lies not in desserts, but in savory foods. Really savory foods.

When I was a little kid, I would look forward to waffles on Saturday morning. My mom would toast eggo waffles and then spread butter on the waffles, still warm. She would set the waffles in front of me, and I would unleash a biblical flood of syrup on the sinful earth that was my two waffles. I think I was 6 years old on the morning that my mom and dad were both sick in bed, too tired to make me waffles, at least on the schedule I was used to. I didn’t take it personally, and I took matters into my own hands.

I got the waffles, and I got them in the toaster without burning the house down. I spread the butter right into the little nooks of the waffles. I sat down and I opened the syrup floodgates. I took a bite, and I wasn’t old enough to understand what had happened in my mouth, but I may as well have been watching galaxies being born. I saw the big bang. I watched life begin and end over and over again over such an incomprehensibly long time that numbers don’t exist to quantify its staggering longness. I saw the horror of the dark heart of man, contrasted by the ineffable joy of existence. My pupils were thrown open like the suicide doors of an expensive sports car, and I was changed forever.

I used salted butter on accident.

Without knowing it concretely, I had just experienced the magic of sweet and savory happening at the same time in my mouth. I finished the waffles with gusto, and immediately transitioned to cartoons, whacked out of my mind on sugar and an unrealized epiphany. I forgot about the sublime purity of that moment, the mathematical constant of truth that I witnessed when I was six.

Then, on a rainy day off, fifteen years later, I sat down to a pretty unassuming meal: Kung-Pao chicken from Pei Wei, and a bottle of Dr. Pauly kabinett Riesling. I had no grandiose intentions for this meal, other than to get fed, and tie on the suggestion of a buzz while I do it. The total cost of this meal was approximately seventeen dollars. I take a bite of the chicken, tasty, probably loaded with MSG but whatever. I’m chewing, and pouring myself a glass of Riesling into a rocks glass. I took a sip, and instantly, I was torn from my dining room table, through time, to that moment when I was six years old. I stood, side by side with my younger self, and we stared into the center of the universe, the nucleus of creation itself.

“Do you know what this means?”

“It means that sweet wine fucking crushes savory food.”

“You're not supposed to say that word.”

“Shut the fuck up, six year old me.”

Flash forward to my kung pao and Riesling. I’m calling my girlfriend at work, I sound panicked. “OK so you stumbled across a good wine pairing, why are you freaking out?”

“No.” I’m catching my breath. “This is bigger than good. This is the truth.”

Sweet wine and intensely savory food is a gastronomic fission reaction that to this very day threatens to extract tears from my eyes every time it is done properly. The principles of sweet and savory, applied to food and wine pairing, is the greatest good I feel like I can consume.

Sweet wine is a handful of buckshot blessed by the last preacher on earth, fired into the black molten heart of the devil.

Consider some of the most prized gems of Houston dining: Bellaire. Hillcroft. Long Point. Our ethnic cuisine is some of the best in the United States. A lot of it is loaded with spice, bursting with Capsaicin and screaming with aromatic intensity. How do you tame those dragons with wine? You do it with acid, and you do it with fucking sugar. No I will not give you a list of dishes paired with recommendations. Ok here’s one: Pichot demi-sec vouvray with the papaya salad at Vieng Thai. That’s all you get. I am asking you to roll into Himalaya, to Otilia’s, to Que Huong with a bottle of sweet white wine and just trust me. Your brain will fall out of your skull.

lightly sweet

Consult your local wine professional today on a bottle of sweet wine that will deliver a flavor experience rivaling the euphoric intensity of pure heroin, with none of the horrifying side effects. They can guide you to exactly how much sweetness you want. Rattle off the dish that its going with, and they can fine tune the recommendation.

Sweet wine is the sword made by the old blacksmith who has lived his whole life under the boot of a world governed by tyranny and evil- the very evil you intend to eviscerate with the divine perfection of his last blade.

Our precious ethnic restaurants are not the only proving grounds for sweet wine. Lock your hands around a bottle of Donnhoff Kabinett, and pay the incredibly reasonable ten-dollar corkage at Paulie’s. Order the bucatini all'amatriciana. Take a bite of this considerably spicy pasta. Chase it with the wine. Use the surplus of complimentary napkins to wipe the tears away from your face as you sob, your mind barely able to survive its brush with infinity (at a total approximate cost of like, 50 dollars, including food, wine, and corkage). Don’t forget to buy a cookie.

sweet

Or hells bells, go to Central Market. Get a bag of Utz classic potato chips, and a bottle of Paolo Sarracco moscato d’Asti. Get some good marcona almonds. Get chex mix, or whatever high end analog they sell at CM. Get pretzels. All of these, with something bubbly, sweet, and uncomplicated, will bring you to your knees. They will bring your friends and family to their knees. The earth will tremble as the world’s population falls in unison to their knees from the inescapable truth: sweet wine goes with damn near everything, and we underestimate its power daily. 

very sweet

Or if you don’t feel like a do-it-yourself religious experience, go to Underbelly. Go to the Pass and Provisions. Go to Hugo's. talk to Matt, talk to Fred, talk to Travis, and talk to Sean. Tell them you want to trip the light fantastic and they will, with your permission, hit you with the semi-truck of flavor that is sweet wine. Talk to David at Uchi. Talk to Kat at Mark’s. Talk to Adele and Mike at 13 Degrees. They will light you up. Talk to Marcus at Ibiza. Talk to any of the wine professionals in the city, and we will show you the truth that we have known for a long time.

I miss the days that the deadliest somm to ever walk a floor, Antonio Gianola (AKA The Enabler), would push my mind to the brink with Madeira and fried chicken livers. With suckling pig and Kerpen two star. If there is justice in the world, if the truth really exists, he will once again join us on the field of battle.

Sweet wine is that shiny gleaming alien assault weapon that nobody knows how to use. As they close in, and all hope is lost, it hums to life. “What are you doing?” You point it at the wall of the ship, “making an exit” and depress the trigger.

And get ready for this: sweet wine is fucking delicious by itself. That’s right. It’s healthier and more natural than soda, which you probably drink. Maybe you don’t drink sugary sodas. But I’m willing to bet you drink at least one cocktail that is sweet, just because you saw Don Draper drinking it on television. Suddenly you’ve decided you’d rather have a tough looking tom collins than be caught with a glass of gewürztraminer. You’re living a double standard, and you’re missing out. You need to get your game face on, and start spending all of your money on sweet wine immediately. You need to take out high-interest unsecured loans to buy more sweet wine. You must pull complex, daring, highly illegal heists of priceless art and sell it on the black market, to finance the sweet wine addiction I am imploring you to pick up.

In a world where certainty is illusive, we need to be reminded of what little hard truth still exists. The kernel of truth that I am gingerly placing in your hands today, dear reader, is that sweet wine is one of the most useful and relevant alcoholic beverages that mankind has ever created.

I encourage you experience the riot of joy, the cold brilliant precision, of the truth.