It is ironic that on a night as a host, you may serve spectacular reds and whites during the course of a dinner, and if you take the extra step to serve a dessert wine, it will be that wine which will most be remembered. Why? Because a dessert wine is so infrequently encountered – in the home or in a restaurant.
Even a quick look at some of the finest wine lists from some of the finest restaurants will reveal but a few entries on the dessert side. Sometimes just Ch. D’Yquem, and nothing else (nothing wrong with Yquem; but more on that later). Again, why? The answer is simple… the wines are rarely ordered.
Perhaps the least understood wine as a category in the United States is dessert wine.
First, we think they are sweet and cloying and leave a syrupy coating in our mouth. And this couldn’t be further from the truth. High quality dessert wine is packed with lush sweet fruit flavours; but then they have a clean finish with a satisfying trace of its powerful sweetness.
Next, we don’t really understand the service. A dessert wine is part of the dinner. It is as much part of hospitality of the table as any wine that would have preceded it. Its presence on the menu recalls a day when there was a leisurely graciousness to our dinning.
And to reduce the world’s dessert wines to one label (even if it is Ch. D’Yquem) is nonsense. Every significant wine producing region makes dessert wine (granted some only for local consumption). Other than sharing sweetness as the common denominator, the world’s dessert wines are as varied as… well, the world.
In France, Bordeaux produces one of the best: Sauternes. Made from a blend of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, the producers will wait ‘til the grapes are “post ripe”to a time when autumn morning mists bring an airborne mold, botrytis cinerea, to the vineyards. This mold attacks the skins of the grapes, bursting them, allowing for water content to escape and thereby concentrate the flavours and sweetness in the ugly shriveled grapes. The resulting wines are a honeyed nectar. It is here where Ch. D’Yquem reigns supreme.
Further to the north, the Vineyards of Alsace work a similar magic with Gewurztraminer, Riesling and Pinot Gris. The Late Harvest wines, called Vendange Tardif resemble the Late Harvest wines on the other side of the Rhine River. And even more exotic are the botrytized Selection de Grains Nobles made from individual selected bunches of grapes.
In Germany the art of making sweet wine stands alongside of the renown German brew-making skill. Working principally with Riesling, the Estates of Mosel and the Rheingau produce wines with varying degrees of sweetness. Beginning with Spatlese (“late picked”), moving to Auslese (“selected harvest”), then to Beerenauslese (“selected berries”), and finally Trockenbeerenauslese (“selected dried berries”). Each level represents a higher degree of minimum sugar level in the grapes picked at harvest.
The ultimate wine produced in this method is Eiswein. Not made in every vintage, Eiswein is made from grapes left on the vine and harvested during the night after a freeze. During the winemaking, the icy content of the grape (water) is separated from the juice leaving an intensely sweet flavour base from which to make a tiny amount of wine. (This style of winemaking has caught on in Canada where other varietals like Vidal are also used to make their Ice Wine.)
Further to the East, long before Sauternes reached its present exalted status, the dessert wine from the Hungarian plain was prized in the Courts of Europe. It all began when the Archbishop Drascovics presented Tokaji Aszu to Pope Pius IV as a gift at the Council of Trent in 1652. From there to Tsars and Kings, the wine became wedded to Royalty.
In Italy, Recioto di Soave is produced from grapes harvested in the fall, and then left to air day ‘til February. The grapes, with a natural loss of 35% of their moisture, have concentrated sweetness and an intensity of flavour, are then pressed into wine. The wine is enjoyed by itself, or more typically with biscotti. A sip of wine, dip the biscotti into the wine… there is nothing better! Recioto soaked biscotti!
South Africa has Straw Wine (also air dried). Argentina, Chile, Napa, Willamette & etc. Really, there isn’t a place that doesn’t produce some type of dessert wine, whether made thru late harvesting or by air drying.
Return to your dinner table. When you serve dessert wine, regardless of the Country’s origin, you have instantly elevated eating to the highest level of dinning. You have just transported your evening to the Cunard Line… to crossing the Atlantic before WWII, when men and women dressed for dinner & when dinner was served in courses, beginning with an aperitif white, proceeding to a fuller white, reds matching to the courses of food and finishing with a dessert wine. And if the dessert wine was Ch. D’Yquem then you would know you had just reached the apex of the night.
Last bit of advice. Whenever you can, buy the worst vintage of Ch. D’Yquem you can find… it will cost you less. You can’t go wrong. Insiders know that even in lesser vintages, Yquem is a glorious wine… if the vintage is truly sub-standard, they don’t make wine.