As the festive season approaches, there is a delicious array of desserts to tempt your taste buds. With this in mind, Ideal Wine Company has created a guide to help you perfectly pair your wine and dessert.
Useful Tips
With wine, there are three factors that must be kept in mind: acidity, intensity and sweetness. From here, you can make judgements over what wines to choose to pair with your desserts. Using these three factors, Ideal Wine Company has made a handy list of tips to remember:
- It is advised that you pick a wine that is equally sweet or sweeter than the dessert you are serving. This ensures that the wine does not taste sour.
- If your dessert is very sweet, it is a clever idea to wait and serve your wine later. The intensity of both a sugary wine and dessert may overpower and be sickly.
- When choosing a wine for dessert, wine experts have a saying: “the sweeter the chocolate, the sweeter the wine, and the darker the chocolate, the darker the wine”. Using this as a guide, it is best to choose a darker wine, such as a full-bodied red, for darker and richer desserts.
- For simple flavours, such as vanilla and caramel, try an oaky wine.
Dessert Ideas
- Apple Pie – pairs well with light caramel flavours
This delicious dessert is a popular choice in autumn. Its blend of fruit, cinnamon and nutmeg provides a seasonal spice. This is lighter than most pies, which means it pairs well with a light botrytized wine. Try a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillion, which provide caramel and honeyed flavours as well as an acidity that will cut through the sugar and butter. Alternatively, the refreshing sweetness and high acidity found in Riesling enhance the baked flavours and cleanses your palate as you eat.
- Brownies – rich and dark notes
A classic dessert full of cocoa, chocolate chunks and nuts. Here, it is a good idea to take the rule of “the darker the chocolate, the darker the wine”. The deep chocolate in brownies makes it a perfect match for a dark red wine. Try a Merlot or a Pinot Noir for a decadent accompaniment.
- Mince Pies – look out for sweet flavours
These sweet and spicy little pies are synonymous with the winter season. However, the difficulty with mince pies is that not only can the mince meat filling be very sweet, it can also be quite acidic. With this in mind, try serving a Madeira or Sauternes. Both wines help to bring out the sweetness of the mince pies, without making an overwhelmingly sugary dessert. The fortified Madeira carries flavours of toffee, raisins, caramel and marmalade, pairing well with the citrusy notes. One the other hand, the lighter Sauternes is French and sweet. Made from botrytized grapes, it results in a sweet and acidic wine, with honey, apricot, peach and nut flavours. You can opt for either wine and still guarantee a delicious pair with your dessert.
With mince pies, serve Madeira or Sauternes. While the fortified Madeira is from Portugal carrying flavours of toffee, raisins, marmalade and caramel, Sauternes is French and sweet, made from botrytized grapes that result in sweet and acidic wines with apricot, honey peaches and nut flavour.
