 |
||
 Download Media Kit
 Subscribe NOW
 |
Have dessert, and drink it, too by Lacey Griebeler
There is no exact science to pairing dessert and dessert wine. But according to Brian Duncan, wine director at Bin 36 (www.bin36.com) in Chicago, “The most important consideration is that you want to make sure that whatever wine you’re serving with the dessert is at least as sweet or sweeter than the dessert you’re serving. And the reason is otherwise, it’ll render the dessert and the wine sour, so both lose in that process.” (Shown here, Bin 36's carrot cake, which Duncan pairs with Pedro Ximenez de Anada 2003 sherry).
At Bin 36, Duncan offers up wine suggestions printed on the dessert menu to aid diners in making a good match. One such pair is the sherry Pedro Ximénez de Añada 2003 (from Alvear, a producer in Córdoba, Spain; www.alvear.es) with pastry chef Matt Kelley’s carrot cake, served with cream cheese ice cream, galangal caramel sauce and kaffir lime-coconut tapioca. “[The wine] has really sweet, almost apricot and nutty notes to it that reflect the carrots. Once the carrots are cooked when you make carrot cake, you extract the sweet sugar from the carrots, and it takes on a nicer, less savory flavor profile, and that really complements it nicely.”
After a big meal, when customers are not looking for a rich dessert, suggest something light and fruity, and pair it with a sparkling wine, Duncan says. “If you’re using fruit flavors like apples, pears or peaches, you want to find a wine that’s going to echo some of those flavors so that they meet toe-to-toe, and one doesn’t overpower the other,” he advises. “One of the things I’m really fond of is sparkling dessert wines because at the end of the meal—quite often, it’s been multicourse or has been heavier—you really can send off your guest with a crescendo because the bubbles themselves act as a digestif, and the freshness of the acidity first of all cleanses the palate like it’s supposed to. And it also has an ability to sort of uplift you in terms of feeling almost as though you haven’t had very much to eat.”
Chocolate can be paired with a dessert wine such as Brachetto, a rosy-colored, Italian sparkling wine. “It loves chocolate,” says Duncan, adding that the nuances in Brachetto especially pair well with chocolate desserts that have berry components, like a flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce.
A dessert with chocolate and nuts is a different story, says Duncan. “What you want to do is go with something like tawny ports because they’re aged in wood, and they have that nuttier flavor that will really complement any nuts in addition to the chocolate. And also you can look at some of the older Pedro Ximénez sherries—the sweeter, darker sherries. They have more of an almost caramelly, nutty component to them, and they really work well with chocolate and nuts together.”
Some dessert wines, however, are best served alone, especially those that are “really heavy or cloying,” according to Duncan. “They end up being almost dessert themselves,” he explains. “I’d say most dessert wines could be served alone, but if you’re really trying to complement [the dessert], you want to echo the flavors that are in the dish.”
But what if a table orders several desserts, and diners want a wine to go with all of them? Duncan says there is one that comes close to a catchall. “There are some wonderful late-harvest, Austrian dessert wines: the Beerenauslese cuvées, which are a variety of grapes that are left on the vine to hang extra time, and they undergo the noble rot, or botrytis. They have a tendency to go with chocolate, with fruit and any variety of sauces.”
With these ideas in mind, consider suggesting wine pairings on your dessert menu, and consult the following list on some popular types of dessert wine to get the juices flowing.
Ice wine (also: Eiswein, icewine)—made from grapes that are frozen on the vine in cold regions, notably Germany and Canada; the ice is pressed out of the grapes before fermentation, leaving behind the natural sugars for a very concentrated, sweet wine. Madeira—Portuguese wine usually fortified with the grape spirit aguardente after aging in a heated room (estufa) to rapidly mature the wine; when fortified early in fermentation (as with Malvasia and Bual grapes), the wine is sweeter. Muscat (also: Moscato, Moscatel)—sweet wine (red and white) from warm regions; good candidates for late-harvest and botrytized wines. Port—Portuguese wine fortified with brandy during the fermentation process; tawny ports are aged in wood barrels. Sauternes—French dessert wine made from Muscadelle and botrytized Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc grapes, which provide an intense sweetness. Sherry—Spanish wine fortified with brandy after the fermentation process; sweet sherries are made by combining a dry sherry (Fino, Oloroso, Amontillado and Manzanilla) with Pedro Ximénez grapes (ex. cream sherry from Oloroso). Tokay (also: Tokaji)—sweet white wine from northeastern Hungary, often botrytized; not to be confused with Australia’s Liqueur Tokay, a wood-aged and fortified dessert wine.
|
Click Here!
|
| Published by Talcott
Communications Corporation. Copyright © 1998-2007 Talcott Communication Corporation. All Rights Reserved |
||
After-dinner
wines