Dessert wines complement and enhance desserts if chosen with care. Choosing a dessert wine club is different to choosing a wine to accompany other food as dessert wines are sweet. Some thought needs to be put into both the wine and the dessert so that the sweetness is balanced or cut through. A case in point is if you are serving a chocolate dessert that is more than 50% cocoa solids then it is going to be more bitter than sweet so you can serve a dessert wine to cut through the bitterness. It is vital when considering dessert wines to understand the properties and flavors of both the dish and the wine.
On the surface it would seem pretty simple to pick up any dessert wine off the shelf and assume that it will go well with whatever dessert you are serving. This is not the case as like any other wine dessert wines come in a variety of styles and flavors for example they can be flowery, fruity, peachy, herby, acidic and can even taste of berries. Do not let this put you off because the simple addition of dessert wine to accompany a dessert can lift the dish from being unremarkable to sublime. Generally you must ensure that the wine you are going to serve is not sweeter than the dessert you are going to serve.
The popularity of dessert wine is increasing as the popularity of entertaining at home is again on the rise. If you want to you can even partner a dessert wine with something other than a dessert. You can partner them with cheese, biscuits, fruit, chocolate and even Foie gras. Going for quality when choosing a dessert wine is important as you want to be left with a nice clean, fruity, sweet taste in your mouth and not a cloying sickliness. If you are trying out a new dessert or if you haven’t sampled dessert wine before it will pay dividends to do a little research on the internet before buying or ask in your local wine merchants for some advice.
Dessert wines are produced throughout the world using different grape varieties and different methods. All dessert wines require a higher sugar levels in order to produce the sweetness and the higher alcohol levels. This can be achieved in a variety of ways, the grapes can be left on the vine for longer this is called a late harvest wine and the process just allows for more sugar to form in the fruit. There are other more high risk methods for example allowing a rot called Noble Rot (Botrytis cinerea) to form this can easily go wrong and an entire crop can be lost due to other types of rot forming. This process is used to make some of the most sought after and famous dessert wines (Sauterne and Tokaji). Then there is the process that creates ice wine where the temperature must have dropped to below -7 °C (19 °F) before the grapes can be harvested. Wine can also be made from raisins which have a higher sugar concentration than grapes. Of course the cheapest and least risky method of achieving a dessert wine is to add sugar/honey to the wine prior to or after fermentation.
In effect the riper a fruit is, the more sugar it contains and this can then intern be converted to more alcohol during the fermentation process. Some dessert wines are fortified wines this is because they have had a spirit added to them prior to fermentation being completed.
When you add spirits to wine prior to the fermentation process completing you end up with a sweeter and stronger wine, the resulting wine can be anywhere up to 20% alcohol by volume.
Dessert wine clubs can proved the perfect bottle to be enjoyed with a variety of foods but on most occasions are enjoyed with dessert, fruit, biscuits or cheese at the end of a meal. In the USA all wines that have alcohol by volume or more than 14% are designated as dessert wines this is not the case in Europe and some other part of the world where there is a distinction made between dessert wine and fortified wines.