German Catalog 2006 USE THIS ONE.qxp - Michael Skurnik Wines

SOS
a new way to measure sweetness
There’s entirely too much yammering in Germany about sweetness, dryness,
sugar; it’s a kind of fetish. For our part, we’re making progress but we
still haven’t quite outgrown a preoccupation with residual sugar as a measure
of “correctness.” I do feel we have reached the point of knowing the difference
between actual sweetness and the sense of sweetness a wine conveys.
Many of us know a Mosel Kabinett with 30 grams of residual sugar and 9
grams of acidity tastes drier than a new world Chard-oak-nay with 9 grams
of sugar, no acid, and 14% alcohol.
I don’t think the standard sugar-pyramid of German wines is Serviceable
any more. Thus I started noting each wine I planned to list according to an
intuitive scale I tried to apply consistently. I call it the SENSE-OF-SWEET-
NESS scale—SOS for short—and you’ll see it following every tasting note. It
should be a more reliable guide to the actual taste of a wine than any word
on any label. Here’s how it goes:
IT STARTS FROM ZERO. Zero is the point of no-discernable sweetness.
MINUS ONE indicates sugar is discernibly absent but the wine is in balance.
MINUS TWO is for lovers of austere wines.
ONE signifies barely discernable sweetness.
TWO signifies sweetness which is discernable but not obtrusive.
THREE signifies sweetness important of itself. Remember, I reject any wine
of grotesque or vulgar sugariness.
FOUR is bona-fide dessert wine.
Put “SOS” into your lexicon today!
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