Did You Know?... About Dessert Wine

Dessert wine isn't just a clever name. It's used to denote wines intended to be drunk with, or sometimes even as dessert. These wines tend to be very full bodied, generally higher in alcohol content, and very sweet. These big, bold flavors don't suit other courses.

Ice Wines: Made from grapes left on the vines until they freeze. This concentrates the sugars and flavors into a single drop of juice, and creates a dense, sweet wine. Commonly made from Riesling, Vidal, and Sauvignon Blanc grapes, to name just a few.

Noble Rot Wines: Cold, wet harvests can allow wine grapes to produce a special mold, called botrytis. This dries out the grapes, concentrating the juice, and imparts a funky flavor like a mixture of stinky cheese, nuts, and honey. The most famous of this type might be Sauternes.

Fortified Wines: As some wines ferment, the winemaker adds a neutral spirit like brandy in the middle of the process to stop the fermentation. This keeps the sugar levels and alcohol content high. The styles, however, can range from sweet to dry. Sherry and Port are common examples.

Best of 2013: Reader's Favorite White Wines

Over the course of 2013, we drank a lot of great wine. We tried the new vintages from some of our favorite Finger Lakes wineries as well as some of their different varietals and other wines from all over the world.

One of your favorites, as well as ours, was a blind tasting of wines from Castello di Amorosa, as we tested to see if we could figure out which glass was the Reserve wine.

And of course, you liked it when we tried something a bit different. While we usually focus on wines with dinner, every once we treat ourselves to a glass with dessert, and Sauternes is always  a favorite.

Quick Review: Chateau Doisy-Vedrine Sauternes 2004

Fr, Chateau Doisy-Vedrine Sauternes 2004
++ // Fruity, Funky  // Nut, Nutmeg, Clove, Apricot // Apricot preserve, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Cardamom // Full

Quick Review: Chateau Villefrance Sauterne

France, Chateau Villefrance, Sauterne 
+ // Sweet/Funky // Floral // Bitter Apricot, Grape, Stone // Full
With blueberry hazelnut tart, brings out the funk.

Fungus Makes This Wine Better

Question: What is Sauternes?

Consider that fermentation is the delicate act of letting something already delicious rot in the hopes that result will taste even better. I once described the process of making cider-jack to a friend as mixing a gallon of cider with a cup of sugar and saying “plop, don’t turn into vinegar!” If you're lucky, that process creates something truly sublime.

Sauternes is a region of France where Botrytis cinerea, also known as “noble rot,” is common. Grapes are left to dry on the vine and then to become infected with this fungus. The result is a higher sugar content in the wine. Now intensely sweet, the wine will also release strong notes of the fungus--very reminiscent of the best sweet blue cheeses. (In fact, a Sauternes pairs extremely well with a strong blue cheese.) 

You’ll often find this wine on dessert menus. It is not for the weak of heart. Its strong flavors will overpower all but the richest of dishes. But the fullness of the wine, redolent of honey drizzled over blue cheese, can make it the perfect aperitif to sip all by itself.