Wine and Sweets
Dessert wines are perhaps something we overlook when we pair wines during a multicourse meal. There are four basic categories of dessert wines: Ice Wines, Late Harvest, Fortified, and Dried Grapes wines. These represent a broad spectrum of wines and styles.
Let’s start by exploring Ice Wines: The taste, nearly always made from white grapes (Riesling, Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc), is quite sweet, usually with a nice acidity with fruit flavors of apple, peach, and apricot. Desserts to try: cheesecakes, berry cobblers, lemon tart, peach desserts, short bread cookies.
Late Harvest Wines: This implies the grapes are picked late in the season. Some are left on the vine so long they begin to shrivel and turn to raisins. The taste: fruit flavors like above, but also some with tropical fruit flavors as well. You can find Botrytis affected wines in this group. Botrytis, a mold, is also known as noble rot. Sauternes would be a good example of a wine that is Botrytis style. Botrytis wine flavors will be nutty, earthy with honey and vanilla. Other examples of Late Harvest can include Late Harvest Semillon, and Late Harvest Zinfandel which are usually not affected by Botrytis.
Desserts to try: apple and pear based desserts, peach desserts, almonds, crème brulee, also apricot and nectarine based desserts.
Fortified Wines: Fortified means to strengthen. In the wine world it means to strengthen the alcohol content by adding neutral grape brandy. Wines in this group would include Port, Sherry, Madeira and Marsala, which are all blends. The taste: vivid sweetness from the grapes themselves, and full bodied from the added alcohol. Blackberry, red cherry, dark raisin and fig are the flavors you will find in these wines. Desserts to try: chocolate, coffee and caramel based desserts go well with port and other “dark” dessert wines (Port and Port styles). Tawny ports and Madeira (Bual and Malmsey) are great with nuts, caramel, toffee, and butterscotch. Try the Madeira (Bual) with Pumpkin pie!
Dried Grapes Wines: These wines come from grape clusters that are harvested and then hung to dry or sometimes placed on mats in the sun to dry. French wines Vine de Paille or Italy’s Vin Santo are examples of these wines. Try pairing these wines with Hazelnut Biscotti or Greek Baklava.
The bottom line is, the wine should always be sweeter than the dessert, otherwise the wine can dull and acidic.
Sparkling desserts wines are usually only slightly sweet and don’t pair well with desserts that are super sweet. Pair a poppy seed lemon cake, which is usually not as sweet, for a great companion to a sparkling wine.
