Sweet Dessert Wines - Muscat, White Port, Frontignac, Tokay , etc
It is a shame to include muscat (or the muscat style of wine that
some Australian vignerons produce) with the other kinds of sweet,
fortified wine that sell so readily in this country, for there are
several Australian made muscats of great quality and distinction. C. H.
Morris and Son, of Rutherglen, produced a muscat in 1954 that was judged
a champion in 1966. It was a magnificent wine, grown in a district
(Northern Victoria) which produces the best sweet, fortified wines (and
some of the best sherries) made in Australia.
 The best muscat is made from brown muscat, or frontignac grapes, allowed
to mature on the vine to the last stage of ripeness before being picked.
Low in acid, high in sugar, this "liqueur" dessert wine has largely been
ignored by wine lovers in Australia, perhaps because most so called
muscat is of poor quality and immature when sold.
The skill in making fine liqueur muscats lies partly in blending ( with
older distinctive wines) and partly in storing in old casks kept
specially for them. The grapes are picked with a sugar content as high
as 18deg Baume, fermented for two to three days in their skins, then
pressed and fortified with grape spirit. The best are six to 10 years
old when bottled.
Poor grapes will not make good wine. It is impossible to make a good
liqueur muscat from the prolific gordo blanco grape, the variety used to
make a large proportion of the sweet sherry/white port style wines that
spend little time in cask. But they are all made in much the same way.
The quality of fine dessert wines comes from using a grape of relatively
low yield, from careful blending, and from ageing, and each of the three
adds its own significant contribution to the cost. You will not buy a
1954 C.H. Morris liqueur muscat for $1 a bottle; indeed you will be
lucky to buy one at all, but if you do—and you may have to go to the
vineyard for it.
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