I am a novice when it comes to dessert wines. What do they taste like when affected by botrytis ("noble rot")? It is not the sweetness but rather a secondary flavor, right? I read somewhere "boiled cabbage"!

Does it taste the same in Sauternes, Tokai and German dessert wines?

I've always associated it with the scent of the watercolourpaintboxes we used for our drawings at school.

A gouache-y thing. The taste can be derived therefrom (I never ate parts of my paintbox, not even the burgundy red bits).

Does this help, or is it just part of my school trauma?

Botrytis raisinates the grapes, so that the remaining juice is really concentrated with sugars and flavours. I associate botrytis with concentrated, almost cloying flavours and sweetness and a glycerol mouthfeel. With some of the cheaper ones I've got a faint musty sort of aroma, but not with the better ones.

[typos edited out]

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The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer

[This message was edited by Pauly on Feb 10, 2004 at 09:46 PM.]

Pauly, my guess is that the musty aroma (which I too have noted in cheaper dessert wines) comes from grapes affected with gray rot, not noble rot making it into the vat. At least the musty aroma is the same as the smell of grey rot.

Sloppy selection.

I like Pauly's description best! I like boiled cabbage too, but I think Pauly has said it with style & grace! (I never associated anything rotting--with sweetness; or even something I would be interested in consuming )

really really good.....

snow sucks, cold is worse.......