Sweetness gets a bad rap. And for good reasons too – in an age where you’ll find sugar in tomato sauce, bread, and canned soup, in the same supermarket where you can buy practically infinite variations on cheap cookies and candy, we are overwhelmed to the point of literal sickness by all things sweet. And we keep going back for more – to paraphrase the excellent First Bite by Bee Wilson, the effect of sweetness on our brains means that even if sugar isn’t love and happiness, it sure feels like it.

But this isn’t a reason to dismiss sweetness entirely. I feel something like pity for those people who claim not to like sweet things, the same sentiment I have for people who say they don’t like pop music or glitter. Taking pride in obscure and difficult pleasures (atonal music, conceptual art) may make you more sophisticated, but you don’t win prizes in life for being hard to impress.

I think this tug-of-war is why I like dessert wines so much. A little glass of really good sticky wine has a world of flavors in it. Tawny port conjures handfuls of nuts and dried fruit by a cozy wood fire, while late harvest Riesling makes me think of Hawaiian holidays, the creamy scent of sunblock meeting tropical fruit. But a bottle of Tokaji I had recently sticks out in my mind the most. I opened it after Thanksgiving dinner, passing around little cups of it to friends and family. It tasted like ripe apricots and fresh black tea, with the tanginess of the fruit meeting the floral intensity of the tea to make it refreshing. But these flavors of their own might have been too astringent – it was the sweetness, in the end, that both highlighted the flavors and tied them together. I can still taste it now.