Stickies

“Stickies” are the affectionate name Australians give to their sweet wines. Though sticklers (so to speak) reserve the term specifically for late harvest wines and wines affected by the noble rot known as botrytis, other Aussies include the country’s phenomenal fortified wines under the sticky umbrella. The most wickedly delicious of these are the sweet fortified muscats and topaques (formerly known as Tokays) from the Victoria region. Reminiscent of toffee, brown sugar, roasted nuts, vanilla, honey, and chocolate syrup, these are wines not to be missed.

I Taste Red

Come, send round the wine, and leave points of belief
To simpleton sages and reasoning fools;
This moment’s a flower too fair and brief
To be wither’d and stain’d by the dust of the schools.
Your glass may be purple, and mine may be blue,
But, while they are fill’d from the same bright bowl,
The fool who would quarrel for difference of hue,
Deserves not the comfort they shed o’er the soul.

—Thomas Moore (1779-1852), Irish poet, from Irish Melodies, Vol. II

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