Bridge the gap between winter and spring with a sweet wine. It’s not warm enough yet to drink pink wines or skinny spring whites like sauvignon or riesling. Nor is it wintry enough to carry on downing big whites such as an oaked chardonnay. Similarly, fizz often fails to hit the spot, unless you are celebrating, so step forward sweet wines, whose high alcohol level and sugar content make wonderfully comforting aperitif and first-course bottles. They are also the perfect excuse to serve a proper pudding at the other end of the meal.

Many British drinkers make a big noise about preferring bone-dry whites when secretly they prefer sweet. One way to lull the confirmed sweet wine hater into drinking a luscious glassful is to chill your bottle to mask some of the sweetness (a couple of hours in the fridge should be ideal). Ditto serving stickies in small glasses, essential if you want to serve several wines and intend to keep everyone’s alcohol intake down to a sensible level. Skinflints will be pleased to know that a little sweet white wine goes a long way, and, in my experience, consumption of sweet white wine is much less than that of dry white wine. Even if you are serving a sticky with a starter, one bottle easily serves eight people.

The French do not suffer our silly bias. They make a point of offering their classic yet grossly undervalued and somewhat unsung sticky sauternes as an appetiser with a creamy slice of foie gras or a rich chicken liver pâté. Great sweet wines like sauternes are renowned for offsetting and minimising the strong salty flavours of a powerful blue cheese. Roquefort is the classic Gallic offering here, but I often serve a chilled sticky with Stilton soufflé as a starter.

If splashing out on a sauternes as an appetiser worries you, buy a half bottle. Sainsbury’s gorgeous, golden, honeyed 2005 Taste the Difference Sauternes is only £8.49 a half bottle and Majestic Wine is giving away the 2003 Château Filhot, with its crystallised pineapple palate, for £9.99 a half bottle. Tesco’s 2004 Finest Sauternes, a little more at £12.20 a half bottle, oozes with a fine, spicy, apricot and marmalade-like tang. Great sauternes will always be expensive: only one glass of wine per vine is made at best, while elsewhere in Bordeaux it’s at least a bottle or more. The Sauternais also have a nightmarish wait for the misty, humid conditions of late autumn, when noble rot runs riot in their vineyards, concentrating the sémillon, sauvignon and muscadelle grapes.

If you want a top sauternes, plump for the seductive, honeyed, apricotty 1989 Château Suduiraut, a great vintage that’s a steal at £19.99 a half bottle at Bibendum (020-7449 4120). Graze through pâté, blue cheese and a rich pudding like crème brûlée with this in your glass and you’ll have a spring in your step, whatever the weather.

jane.macquitty@thetimes.co.uk

Explore Food & Drink

• Gordon Ramsay

• Heston Blumenthal

• Recipes

• Wine

• Real Food

• Anjum Anand

• Eating Out

• Video Recipes

Times Recommends

• English wine has always been possible
• AA Gill reviews Foxtrot Oscar
• The authentic taste of Italy: Veneto