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• A look at muscat wines

One of the best ways to choose a wine is to browse the shelf and pick one that sparks your interest. You just never know what you’ll find. Case in point: Taking a late night stroll down the aisles of Wal-Mart in an effort to amuse myself on a ho-hum evening, I stumbled across the Australian Alice White Red Lexia.

I’ve tried Alice White’s Lexia before when my roommate brought it home one night. A white dessert wine, it was sweet, fruity and easy to drink. But this Red Lexia was an anomaly to me. Not actually a red wine or a rosé per say, it had the color of cranberry juice.

Only three bottles of it, all a little dusty, seemed shoved haphazardly next to the pristine row of White Lexia as if it were a mistake. I compared the labels of the White and Red Lexia, looking for a clue to its identity, but they both said the same exact thing. That was the last straw — if the label could tell me nothing, this wine would have to come home with me so I could uncover its secrets.

Both the White Lexia and the Red Lexia are muscat wines. Muscat grapes are grown all over the world and are suspected to be one of the first types of grapes grown by the Greeks. It has many varieties and can be either a white or red grape. To achieve the sweetness of a dessert wine, the fruit is left on the vine well into the autumn until it is almost over-ripe to pull out the natural sugars of the grape.

I found that Australia is known for their dessert muscat wines. These wines are a favorite because of the long Australian autumn afternoons, which are particularly good for getting the grapes good and ripe. Some wineries even let their muscat grapes shrivel before they pick them, ensuring an intense sweetness.

The Rutherglen area of Australia is the best known for their dessert muscats, which are often a translucent, jewel-toned red, just like the oddball Red Lexia I picked up. Wines of this color are known as “tawny” in the wine industry. Good Rutherglen wines are prized for their sumptuous, caramel-like flavors and hints of fruit.

Although I failed to detect any caramel in my Red Lexia, it certainly was sweet and delicious. It had the flavor of very ripe plums and was satisfying after a meal. However, it seemed overly sweet by the bottom of the glass, so I suggest it in small quantities.