Dessert and dessert wines: A sweet pairing

By Ryan Chen
Translated by S. Ying

In recent years, Taiwan wine culture has slowly grown and taken root. However, Western cultures have a long-established tradition of pairing wines with each entree, starting from aperitifs before a meal to table wines during the meals and a digestif afterwards. Dessert wine pairing requires good knowledge to ensure the correct amount of sweetness and avoid overpowering a dessert. Successfully achieving this can make this the climax of your meal if you hit the perfect sweet note.

First, dessert wines must be sweeter than the dessert in order to help lower the acidity of the wines and ensure it hits your palate with a good balance. It is a perfect pairing if you still have an aftertaste of the dessert wine after you sample the dessert. Suggested here are some world-famous sweet wines that can be paired with various dessert, starting with Cream Sherry and Sherry Pedro Ximenez (PX). Both of these sherry wines are very sweet and great with sweet cookies, apples or pear pies, chocolates, ice cream, orange-flavored cakes, walnut pies, nuts, pumpkin pies, egg tarts, and creme brulee, to name a few desserts.

Port is a fortified wine, pairing perfectly with chocolate desserts, nuts, berries or coffee-flavored sweets. Riesling wines can be paired with a wide scope of desserts and some popular options are Beerenauslese (BA), Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA) and Eiswein, which go well with caramel sweets, fruit tarts and peach cakes.

The final two dessert wines worth mentioning are Sauternes from France and Hungary's Tokaji, both more expensive. They usually pair well with almond, apple, pear or apricot flavored sweets, plus creme brulee, souffle, and lemon and tropical fruit based cakes. With so much to enjoy, it would certainly be a sweet bargain if we could have three stomachs--one for dessert, one for the meal and one for the dessert wines!

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