Grape Gossip - Dessert Wines, The Sweeter the Better!

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Dessert wines are a subject close to my heart; I've got a real sweet tooth and love to crack a bottle of something sweet at the end of a meal (or for that matter at the start!) Here's my rough guide to sweeties.

Let's start by clearing up a little misconception. So-called Dessert wines are often completely inappropriate for drinking with pudding. As a pudding, sure, but they're often too sticky to go well with sweeter dishes. They should really be called 'Sweet wines' - the misnomer arises from a desire amongst wine experts to distance them from rubbish like Liebfraumilch, which are often described as sweet, but are completely different.

There are a number of different ways of making dessert wines (see below), but they all share a couple of characteristics: They have a high level of residual sugar (sugar that is left in the wine after fermentation is complete) and high levels of acidity (often much higher than 'dry' wines). The acidity is essential to balance the sweetness, and without it a sweet wine is cloying and flabby.

So how are dessert wines made?

Put simply, dessert wines are made by concentrating the sugar content of the grape (or grape must) before fermentation. This can be done in a number of different ways:

Late Harvest
The simplest technique involves leaving the grapes on the vine much longer than grapes for dry wine leading to very ripe grapes with high sugar levels, but is dependent upon a long, dry ripening period and so best suited to New World areas, though it perhaps originates in Alsace where the technique is called Vendange Tardive.

Fortification
This technique does not (necessarily) involve late-harvesting the grapes, but instead uses fortification to stop fermentation when there is still sugar left in the wine. The most famous of these wines is Port, but much sweeter and usually white (ish) versions are made elsewhere - notably in France (Vin Doux Naturel) and Australia (Rutherglen Muscat). The Australian versions are notable as they make great matches for chocolate with nutty, dark flavours.

Some grapes are more suited to sweet wines (botrytis especially likes thin-skinned grapes), and the best are made with:

Semillon
Sauvignon Blanc
Muscat
Riesling (look out for the rare but exhilarating German sweet wines Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese)

That isn't to say that other grapes can't make good sweet wine - Gewurztraminer makes great sweeties in Alsace and innovative winemakers are making sweet wines with Viognier, Roussanne and even Chardonnay

Food Matching

I mentioned at the top that the name 'Dessert wine' is a bit misleading. As a match for sweet food, you're often better off with a more medium or medium-sweet wine like a german Auslese or Moscato d'Asti. Sometimes only sweet will do, and as I mentioned, chocolate (which has few genuinely good wine partners) is fond of fortified Muscat.

The Italians often serve sweet wines as a dessert in themselves, sometimes accompanied by a fragment of biscotti.

The finest of dessert wines (Sauternes, Tokaji) are in fact better matched to savoury food. Sauternes and Foie Gras is a classic combination (and it can go with more PC paté such as Chicken Liver), and matching this great botrytised wine with Roquefort or Stilton is a match made in heaven.

My best piece of advice for dessert wines though is to experiment. They're a many and varied thing, so have a go, and if it doesn't work out just be thankful that you only bought half a bottle!

You're probably thirsty now, so visit our dessert wines page HERE