Too Sweet For What?

As I poured the lovely Virvolte for customers this past Saturday, two ladies exclaimed "this is too sweet!" My first thought was too sweet for what? For the style, or for them personally, or for the food they were going to eat? As I prodded a little further they were proclaiming the wine is too sweet to be a good wine.
After getting past the feeling having my feathers ruffled (I can taste through Premier Cru Burgundies to select the best, but I don't know when a wine is too sweet?), I realized that these nice ladies were just a little misguided on two levels.

• The first was that they were under the impression that any good wine is not a sweet wine. Nothing could be further from the truth and since I have already written about this extensively I will just provide a link to my FLS article on the subject.
• The second is knowing when one has sufficient knowledge to judge a wine appropriately. Meaning that if one is not a fan of sweet in general then no amount of quality in a sweet wine is going to convert them, but that does not mean the wine has flaws. We frequently hear people passing judgement on a wine at a tasting, and rarely do we take it personally (but I feel for winemakers pouring their own wine). I would like to see people would consider that a wine they do not like may still be considered a good wine.

On a final note the wine I was pouring is actually a best-seller for us and I know that people do not mean to offend when they don't like the wine. I would just like for them to consider that it may still be a quality wine.