Decadent desserts grace many a table over the holidays, but too often hosts and guests treat it as an obligation rather than as a celebration. Think about it. After an abundant meal with friends and family, the dessert course comes around and, “would you like some (insert dessert selection here)?” The answer is either a polite refusal or “just a small piece please.” What’s wrong with us? Are we so concerned about our waistlines that we can’t celebrate with some dessert this holiday season? In the spirit of having a whole year to forget about your New Year’s resolution to eat better and lose the weight, it’s time to break out the dessert wine. Dessert wines are typically sweet but not always so, and there are plenty of ways that they can be made, ensuring that you should be able to find a match for both your palate and wallet.
Port is a style of fortified wine made in Portugal. The addition of brandy about halfway through during fermentation kills the yeast, keeps about half the sugar of the grapes, and ratchets the alcohol up to around 20 percent. Sound yummy? Its then stored in barrels for two years when it’s tasted and slated for one of several types of port. Barrel aged ports become tawny ports, while bottle aged ports have that deep red colour most expect from port. Most are released ready to drink, but tawny ports are especially tasty and versatile with everything from nutty to caramel-flavoured desserts.
Dow’s 2006 Late Bottled Vintage Port, Douro, Portugal Late Bottled Vintage (LBV) ports are some of the best port values out there. The wine is bottled late, accelerating its aging process slightly. It’s filtered and bottled around 4-6 years after the vintage and released ready to drink - no further aging required. Dow’s LBV shows plenty of lush red berry fruits, a little spicy kick, and undercurrents of herb and mint. $23
and finally, malmsey is the sweetest. These wines complement a range of food from foie gras to nutty desserts, while drier styles pair well with soups, charcuterie, and less sweet desserts. A bottle, once open will keep for more than a year or so.
Henriques & Henriques 10 year Bual, Madeira, Portugal It’s hard to find a lot of good madeira here in Alberta, but H&H has a good range available in most styles. While I prefer a drier style of madeira, bual is a great after dinner wine - plus the sweetness eases some of the oxidized and cooked notes of good madeira - c’mon give it a try! $63 Tokaji Aszú is the great dessert wine of Hungary and still relatively unknown to most wine drinkers. Made primarily from the furmint grape the grapes are heavily affected by the botrytis cinerea fungus. They shrivel up, preserving their sweetness, but losing much of their water content. The grapes are kneaded into a paste (measured in puttonyos or traditional baskets) and the resulting wine is rich and honeyed, and they also age incredibly well. Look on the label for the number of puttonyos, the higher the number - the sweeter the wine. One of the best wines with blue cheese, it’s also great with foie gras or nutty desserts, serve well chilled.
Patricius Tokaji 2000, 6 Puttonyos, Hungary Madeira - another style of wine that is made in Portugal, on the island of Madeira. These wines are virtually indestructible, as during their manufacture they are exposed to a seasonal heating and cooling cycle that would destroy lesser wines. With a distinctive cooked sugar (or madeirized) character, they have great acidity and range in sweetness from very dry to very sweet. The four most common styles of madeiras are sercial-the driest style, then verdelho, bual is medium sweet,
It may be tough to find this particular tokaji, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look. Wonderful textures with intense citrus (loads of mandarin orange), floral, and a little rum raisin all around. It is 6 puttonyos, so it’s quite sweet, but there is still some balance here. $75 (500 mL bottle) culinairemagazine.ca • 63