Heading into winter, why is there all this whingeing yet again about the high alcohol level of wines? After all, this is precisely the point when an extra dollop of comforting alcohol is needed, as the days darken and big food is dished up. Pouring a skinny little 11 per cent alcohol white, or a shy, scarcely 12 per cent beaujolais-weight red, on a cold, dark night with your best casserole is just daft. Also, if you think a wine is rather more alcoholic than you would like, or incompatible with your drive home, then why not drink just one glass, instead of your usual quota?

All this griping about high alcohol content neatly divides the old and new school of wine writers. Die-hards uniformly loathe high-alcohol wine and are fond of declaiming that, over the past decade, the average alcohol content in Bordeaux and Burgundy wines has risen from 12 per cent at best to today’s 13.5 per cent or more. Yet the summers in Europe are much hotter now, and most years in today’s climate winemakers have the luxury of fully ripe grapes, if they are prepared to wait.

What few commentators get to grips with is that balance is what you are looking for in wine; a harmonious whole where acidity, alcohol, tannin, extract and fruit all come happily together. The greatest wines with lots of flavour and concentration can carry an extra alcoholic degree, but the other elements have to be judiciously in place.

New World winemakers’ passion for pushing their wine up one more alcoholic degree does not always pay off. Currently, lots of top-dog California chardonnays weighing in at 14 per cent or more taste so oaky, alcoholic and spirity that even one sip of these fruit bombs is off-putting. Similarly, I loathe Australian winemakers’ continued obsession with late-harvest, low-yielding, old-vine shiraz and grenache, turning them into surly, sugary, blockbuster 15 per cent alcohol reds that are impossible to drink.
So far, my palate’s cut-off point for drinkability is 14.5 per cent, and most of these have come from the New World. Taste either the magnificent, seductive, summer pudding fruit-laden 2004 Colomé (£12.79, Oddbins), or the superb, curranty, cedary 2004 Cape Mentelle Cabernet-Merlot (£11.99, Waitrose and Majestic), both 14.5 per cent delights.
As for fortifieds, extra alcohol here brings extra flavour, as anyone tucking into the glorious 17 per cent Solera Jerezana Reserva Manzanilla sherry (£6.99, Waitrose) will know. Bone dry, this delicious sherry delivers oodles of salty, floral, iodine-charged meaty finesse that the wishy-washy 15 per cent manzanillas and finos can never reach.

It’s the same with port. Dull, l9 per cent alcohol, commercial late-bottled vintage ports just do not hit the spot in the way that Warre’s fancy, floral, plummy, l995 Bottle-Matured Vintage Port does (£15.49, Waitrose). Fans of flavour take note.

jane.macquitty@thetimes.co.uk

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