According to the national press, both the 'new style', more flavoursome Italian white wines and new world 'sticky' dessert wines are filling the shelves of wine stores and supermarkets around the country.

Unfortunately, in this part of the world, few of these wines can be found locally, writes Derek Kingwell.

What the papers and trade magazines say is happening in the big cities is not happening around here.

In fact, the only company making any headway locally is Oddbins.

It is the place to shop for choice in both areas, offering more than a dozen new world 'sticky' dessert wines and some 30 plus new-style Italian whites.

A few years ago, the words crisp and dry were about as descriptive as you could be with most Italian white wines as they were generally an aroma-free and flavour-free zone.

However, the trade keeps singing "the times they are a changing".

Now, at last, we are supposed to have a variety of flavours, not the big up front fruit flavours of many new world wines but subtler, zesty, more food-friendly wines.

So, where is this new wine then?

I do have to agree with the trade's claim that the 'sticky' is becoming more a part of people's lives than ever before.

A 'sticky' is wine-trade lingo for any sweet wine.

This is truly, madly, deeply sweet - not sweet-ish as in Liebfraumilch or many new world chardonnays.

The trend became noticeable in the late 1980s, when no dinner party finished without a bottle or half of Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise.

Wine can be sweet (or, more correctly, prevented from being dry) in any number of ways.

If most wine is dry, it is because yeasts are so efficient.

They can convert as much as 250g per litre of sugar into alcohol before the fumes overcome them.

The quickest way to stop them is simply to add alcohol.

This is the method used for port, and also Beaumes-de-Venise.

The greatest sweet wines, the most honeyed in texture, round and velvety, complex and capable of long ageing, are ones where botrytis (or noble rot) has played a part.

This fungus attacks grapes in warm, moist climatic conditions and forms a mould which hastens the fermentation process and concentrates the sugars.

It is of major importance in the production of sweet wines, its presence detectable by a honeyed taste on the nose and palate and is known as pourriture noble in France, Edelfule in Germany, and ' botrytised' in Australia.

Unfortunately, botrytis can never be counted on.

If the autumn is too wet, the rot is far from noble; if it is too dry you just get raisins - the wine can be sweet, and even very good, but never quite so luscious.

However, the new world has a short cut (used to brilliant effect in Australia and California in climates where botrytis is not natural) of "seeding" the crop with the fungus spores.

When the process works, wherever it comes from, it is a divine happening and experience, if you're lucky enough to taste it.

It is also worth remembering that a luscious 'sticky' can lift any less than successful dinner party to new and glorious heights - and even beyond!