Sweet Pairings

When planning a dinner party everyone takes their main course into consideration when choosing what wine they will serve along with it. Whether is chicken, beef or fish there is a wine that it can be perfectly paired with.

We should take this same thought process into consideration when we make desserts. While sometimes it’s easier to serve cookies with a glass of milk or perhaps serving a slice of pie with a glass of water, to cleanse the palette of the sweet sugars each bite leave behind. We neglect the fact that dessert wines are made to be served alongside a wonderful dessert entrée.

Some people may think that pairing a dessert and a dessert wine together may have too much sugar for some of their guests. Dessert wine portions are much smaller than a regular wine of glass, so the amount that you serve will be a fraction of the amount that you would serve with any other wine. If you still have some reservations, feel free to serve the sweet wine as the dessert.

An easy way to pair a sweet wine with a dessert is to look at the wines label. Read the words that are used to describe the flavors in the wine and pair it with similar desserts. By paring these similar characteristics with a dessert, it will help to draw out the like characteristics in the wine. A general rule for dessert wine pairings is that you should match the sweetness of the dessert with the wine. The wine should still have a high enough acidity that it balances out the dessert.

There are three basic components that should be taken into consideration when paring a dessert with a sweet wine. You should look for acidity, intensity and sweetness in any dessert wine that you are interested in serving. The acidic nature of a dessert wine should be enough to give the dessert balance. The intensity of the wine should be at least equal to the intensity of the dessert. You want the wine and the dessert to complement each other rather than trying to overpower one another. Generally speaking the wine should be sweeter if not just about as sweet as the dessert. Sweet wines tend to go well with desserts that are similar in color. For example a cheesecake will pair nicely with a sweet sparkling wine. Cheesecakes are usually light in color and will match the lightness of a white sparkling wine. Lightly sweet wines pair great with fruit and vanilla desserts.

There is no right or wrong pairing with dessert wines. As long as you match the intensity of the wine to the intensity to the dish you can come up with the perfect combination. For instance, you may like the paring of apple pie with a late harvest red Zinfandel while your spouse may like the apple pie paired with a late harvest Riesling. Dessert wine parings are just like any other paring, they work based on individual preferences.

Editor: We don't do a lot of sweet wines, heck we've only shipped one in the entire lifespan of Uncorked Ventures that had any significant level of sweetness, since most of our wine of the month club members aren't interested in these wines, however I believe that there are some serious Riesling's being produced in a slightly sweet style that would fit our wine club nicely.