If you tell someone you like chocolate or ice cream, they would probably nod in agreement and consider that to be pretty normal. However, if you tell them you like Riesling or sweet wine, there’s an automatic assumption that you’re taste buds never hit puberty. Why do we think that eating sweets is OK, but drinking them has become some kind of faux pas? It’s OK to chew your sugar, but totally unacceptable to drink it… hmm. The concept is certainly not universal; Europeans seem to attack sweet wine with the same kind of enthusiasm North Americans reserve for cake and pie.

Perhaps it stems from the dark days of the ’70s and early ’80s when our government was brutishly dictating our wine drinking habits. It launched an assault of shameless proportion, assailing us with every poorly made wine the Germans ever churned out, while skilfully avoiding the abundance of great ones. Sadly, survivors of this crisis remain traumatized, carefully avoiding any wines in tall, slender bottles donning a church, nun or scripty font. They are convinced that one sniff of a German Riesling will send them back to the dark ages, condemned to a life of drinking cloying, industrial slop. Calgarians appear to be making a sluggish recovery from our totalitarian regime. Baby steps of trust are being built up as we experiment with the odd sweet Riesling at a restaurant, or an off-dry Vouvray someone slipped into a dinner party. Ironically, as we reject sweet white wines, many of us have unknowingly embraced sweet reds (those critter-labelled, mass-produced jobs from Australia often pack a generous helping of sugar to cover up some otherwise obvious shortcomings). However, because they’re red, no one wants to reject them for being too sweet and, thus, our double standard is born.

We seem to be stuck on the idea that some unspoken progression is at work when we learn about wine. We must start with sweet whites, move quickly on to dry ones and then to red and never look back. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve offered someone a glass of “red or white wine” only to have them quickly fire back with “red of course,” like it’s a badge of honour to prefer red over white, never mind sweet white.

The fact is that there is a hell of a lot of great sweet wine being made today, especially in Germany. At one point in history these wines were praised above all others, including those from Bordeaux and Burgundy. This was long before the stigma of wine magazines, elitism and pomposity crept into the scene, and people just tended to drink what they liked.

Of course there is one big advantage to the lack of popularity of sweet wines in our market: they’re really good buys. You can pick up incredible examples of Riesling for around $20 and, if you’re willing to spend a couple more Deutschmarks, you can get something truly extraordinary for around $30.

If you still can’t get used to the idea of drinking sweet wines, maybe it’s time we find some new words for you. Forget sweet. How about voluptuous? Sensual? Seductive or transcendent? Would you drink that?

Try these:

• Chateau Roumieu Sauternes (375ml), $19.95

• Schoech Riesling, $26

• Rabl Riesling (this one is dry — Riesling can do that, too), $20

• Huet Vouvray Demi Sec, $40

• Schloss Reinhartshausen Rheingau Riesling, $18 (you don’t have to pronounce it, just clip this column and point)