Sweet Tarts in a Bottle

BY DOUG FROST

Doug is both a Master of Wine and Master Sommelier, one of only three in the world to achieve both titles. He lives in Kansas City.

The rise of Missouri’s “off-dry” wines.

I know I’m supposed to like complex red wines; that’s what they told me in sommelier school. (There is no such school, by the way, but roll with me for a moment.) People with fancy initials after their names such as MS, MW, DipWSET, or SWE (those are all actual wine accreditations) are required to be obsessed with Bordeaux, Burgundy, the finest Barolo or Champagne, and Napa Cabernet.

But many Master Sommeliers and Masters of Wine are Riesling fanatics. It’s true that Riesling —sweet, dry, somewhere in between—is often their jam. Most great Riesling is grown on steep slopes in Germany and Austria, though there are worthy examples in France’s Alsace region, Australia, the US Pacific Northwest, and even South Africa. What all of these vineyards have in common is the weather. The temperature outside is either cool or cold, and the grapevines struggle to fully ripen the grapes.

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That’s changing, though, due to demonstrable global warming. A few decades ago, the top German Rieslings were so unripe, so tart, that a favored way to produce them was to leave some of the grape’s natural sugar unfermented, rendering the wine sweet. That sweettart combination was sometimes intensely dramatic, producing the unique character that has made these wines famed for centuries. These days, there are fewer and fewer such experiences; indeed, most German Riesling is made as dry wine today. Some of us oldtimers still seek out those showy sweet-tart wines.

Perhaps surprisingly, we can still get a bit of that thrill with Missouri wines. Yes, Riesling is rarely grown around here (it’s both too hot and too cold, and that’s our damnable weather), but other grapes prosper, like Vignoles, Vidal Blanc, Valvin Muscat, and Traminette. Moreover, the myth that Missouri wines are always sweet is based upon similar circumstances to that of traditional German Riesling—the grapes are just too tart by themselves. Some people really like very tart wines; most people don’t. So, the grapes that succeed in our weather have, for years, been produced with unfermented grape juice left in them to sweeten them up.The devil will always be in the details. Wine drinkers who are not used to Missouri wines have complained

The devil will always be in the details. Wine drinkers who are not used to Missouri wines have complained that the wines produced in our state are too sweet, and perhaps they have been, at least to those discriminating consumers. The last few decades have seen winemakers adopt a lighter touch and, even more, winegrowers have grown adept at ripening their grapes so that incipient tartness isn’t so aggressive. The new wines are better described as “off-dry” than sweet, a term meant to suggest just enough sweetness to balance the inherent tartness of the grape. These off-dry wines differ from semi-sweet or sweet wines, as they lack the noticeable, defined sweetness that those wines possess.

It’s further evidence of the evolution of midwestern winemaking; the wine industry continues to grow here not simply because there are more wineries but because there are better and better wines. If what you like is bone dry wines, there are plenty of those too. But if you crave some fruity sweetness in your white wines, excellent choices abound.

Stonehaus Farms Vidal Blanc

This article was originally published in the May 2025 edition of Missouri Life magazine.