Dessert Wine - A Sweet Finish

Dessert wine instructions:

Dish up your favorite cake or pie or ice cream or crème brulee or tiramisu and then check out these favorites:

Port

This is a sweet red wine produced mainly in the Douro valley of Portugal. There are some white ports as well but the favored ones are the reds.

A main feature of port is using fortification as a process in making it. By adding distilled spirits (usually a brandy) to add alcohol, this holds off the fermentation of the sugars. Thus, you get a heavier and sweeter wine very suitable for dessert and after dinner nightcaps.

There are two basic types of port - ruby and tawny.

Ruby port is stored in stainless steel tanks and then bottled to preserve the dark red color. It does not age well and tends to be fruity.

Storing the tawny port in barrels enhances oxidation and evaporation. Over time this brings out the golden tawny color and nutty taste for which it is known. In the photo at right, note the more brownish tawny on the left and the deep red ruby on the right.

Ports are the wines that can age for many years. On a menu, you will see the various ages: 10 years, 20 years, 40 years. As they age, you will note three characteristics:

The color is more tawny (wonder why?)
The taste is more nutty and smooth
The price goes up

So now when you want that after dinner nightcap, you’ll know what to have. To find some good port, check out the port page at wine.com.

Madeira

This Portuguese wine has the distinction of an unusual winemaking method. Made from white grapes, it is heated to 140 degrees for over 90 days and exposed to oxidation. This is to duplicate the long voyages that they took to the new world. Who would think that would work? But it did.

How Madeira tastes depends on the fermentation technique used to regulate the amount of sugar in the wine. Madeira’s taste will range from almond to smoky to raisins to coffee-caramel and butterscotch. There are four types based on how dry or sweet they are:

Sercial which is the driest
Verdelho which is dry with a little sweetness
Bual which is sweet with a little dryness
Malmsey which is quite sweet

There are also a number of different styles of Madeira based on aging. They are

Finest (3 years)
Reserve (5 years)
Special Reserve (10 years)
Extra Reserve (15 years)
Vintage (20 years)

Madeira can still be good even after extreme aging over 150 years! Note the date (1894) on the cork in the photo above. I guess you would call that vintage.

Here’s some trivia for you:

George Washington drank Madeira.
The Declaration of Independence was toasted with Madeira
The Constitution was ratified with Madeira

So by drinking Madeira, you’ll be doing your patriotic duty.

Muscat

Grown all over the world from Australia to the United States, this grape is one of the world’s oldest varietals dating back several thousand years. The Portuguese and Spanish versions are used to make Muscatel.

Muscat is used for dessert wines, sparkling wines, table wines, and even brandy. You can even eat the grapes. Maybe when Marc Anthony was dropping grapes into Cleopatra’s mouth, they were Muscat. In fact, muscat is unusual in that the wine actually tastes like grapes. And, there is a California version that even smells like oranges.

Sherry

This is a fortified wine made from white grapes grown in Spain. However, unlike port, the alcohol is added after fermentation rather than during it. While lighter and drier sherries exist, this wine tends to be more sweet, creamy, buttery, and syrupy than port.

Like port, there are two main types of sherry. One is fino which is the lighter and drier type. The other is oloroso. This is the above mentioned sweeter type.

By the way, did you know that sherry production dates back to 1100 BC? Now that’s what I call aging.

Ice wine

This is a syrupy and very sweet higher end dessert wine. It gets its name from the fact the grapes are covered in ice when they are picked. This heavily concentrates the scarce amount of juice left in the grape resulting in a bottle of “liquid gold” so named for the color and the cost.

Cabernet Sauvignon

Huh? What? Yes, one of the best discoveries I made was drinking cabernet with chocolate. It’s a great balanced combo. Try it sometime. Besides, many regular dessert wines are too sweet with chocolate.

A Little Dessert Wine 101

Typically, dessert wines are very sweet with high alcohol content. There are four ways to add sweetness to the wine:

Grow sweeter grapes
Add sugar (sounds obvious, does it?)
Add alcohol (which fortifies the fermentation)
Remove water to concentrate the sugar

Speaking of sweetness, a general rule is that the wine should be sweeter than the food it is paired with. It is easy to get overwhelmed by all the sweetness. Naturally, it is also good on its own.

They also have the distinction of aging a very long time (10 years or more - sometimes a lot more). I once had a port bottled in 1927 - when my father was in diapers. It was still good.

Another good feature is that once you open them, they can stay open for a while and still be good. This is unlike some regular wines and champagnes that go flat in just a few days.

The best way to grow grapes for dessert wine is simply a late harvest. The grapes over-ripen sometimes to the point of being raisins. Thus you have high sugar and low juice. Fermentation then adds the alcohol.

Enjoy!

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