Why does Vin Doux Naturel taste like that?

Characteristically medium-full body. Commonly associated with strawberry, raspberry, dried herbs, white pepper.

Not claiming: That every wine from this variety shows these characteristics. This is the range across the category, and site and winemaking move wines within and beyond it.

Characteristically very low tannin and light-medium body. Commonly associated with grape, orange blossom, elderflower, peach.

Not claiming: That every wine from this variety shows these characteristics. This is the range across the category, and site and winemaking move wines within and beyond it.

Characteristically very low tannin, medium-minus acidity and medium-full body. Commonly associated with orange peel, grape, honeysuckle, raisin.

Not claiming: That every wine from this variety shows these characteristics. This is the range across the category, and site and winemaking move wines within and beyond it.

Warmer growing seasons are associated with faster sugar accumulation and lower retained acidity, so fruit reaches a given potential alcohol earlier in the season.

Varies: Above the vine’s photosynthetic optimum the relationship reverses: extreme heat stalls ripening, inhibits anthocyanin synthesis and can raise sugar only through berry dehydration.

Not claiming: That warm regions necessarily make high-alcohol wine. Potential alcohol at any moment is a choice point; the producer decides when to pick.

A Mediterranean pattern of wet winters and dry summers is associated with reliable ripening and with mild late-season water stress, which restricts berry size and raises the ratio of skin to juice.

Varies: Where the dry season is severe or lengthening, the same pattern produces damaging rather than beneficial stress, and irrigation becomes necessary rather than optional.

Not claiming: That water stress is beneficial as such. Mild stress helps; severe stress halts ripening.

Adding spirit raises alcohol above the level yeast can tolerate. Added during fermentation it halts the process, leaving unfermented grape sugar in the wine — which is why Port is sweet. Added after fermentation has finished, the wine remains as dry as it already was, which is the Sherry case.

Varies: Timing is the whole variable. The same operation on the same wine a week apart produces a sweet fortified wine or a dry one.

Not claiming: That fortification produces sweetness. It produces sweetness only when it interrupts a fermentation that still has sugar to work on.

Prolonged contact with air produces acetaldehyde and, over longer periods, sotolon, associated with walnut, curry leaf and dried-fruit characters.

Not claiming: That these characters indicate a fault. In oxidatively aged styles they are the intended result.

Depends on the style entirely. Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise and its relatives are for drinking young while the grapey aromatics last; Maury and Banyuls aged oxidatively into rancio character run for decades and are sold at the age they have reached.

Not claiming: That a wine of this style will develop these characters. Ageing potential varies by producer, vintage and storage, and most wine is better young.