Welcome back wine lovers.  This month’s rambling will be about dessert wine. Let’s start by providing a rudimentary definition of the term ‘dessert wine’.  Well, as you might guess, it has a lot to do with dessert.  In fact, it can be dessert in and by itself after an arduous evening of overeating and imbibing.  Or it can be paired with a more traditional dessert where flavors complement each other. Either way, by definition, the wine is sweet.  How sweet, you ask.  It could be cloyingly so or only slightly sweet.

Let’s start by getting some technical discussion out of the way. Note that as grapes ripen on the vine, more and more sugar is present. That amount of sugar is regularly measured (using a special tool called a refractometer) and the eventual harvest time is dependent on that measurement. The term used to quantify sugar content of the grape samples (called must) is degrees brix. Each degree brix (just called brix for short) is equal to one gram of sugar per 100 grams of liquid. Every 1.8 brix has the approximate potential to convert (ferment) to one percent alcohol.  Hence, brix at harvest multiplied by about 0.6 defines an approximate alcohol content of a very dry wine if all sugar is fermented.  Depending on whether the wine to be produced is dry, off dry (semi-sweet) or sweet, grapes are allowed to ripen more and more until desired level of brix is reached. Hence, the term ‘late harvest wine’ became somewhat synonymous with dessert wine. For comparison, dry whites are generally picked at 20-24 brix, dry reds are normally picked at 22-24 brix and dessert wines typically from 26-40 brix.

Now, once the grapes are picked, crushed and fermented, the degree of sweetness of the finished product is technically measured, using a different scale, by the percentage of residual sugar (or grams per liter of liquid). This is the sugar that remains in the liquid after fermentation is complete. One percent residual sugar is equal to 10 grams of sugar per liter of liquid. I’ll go a little more into how various dessert wines vary by residual sugar shortly but since your eyes are probably glassed over at this point, we’ll first discuss different options for dessert wine.

The first option is no dessert wine at all. That comment is meant to reflect the fact that many, in fact most American wine drinkers don’t like any kind of sweet wine. Not even slightly sweet white table wine such as riesling. A typical riesling has 6 to 12 grams per liter of sugar which can definitely taste sweet on the high end of that range with slightly more than 1% residual sugar. So, for those that can’t handle riesling, dessert wine will not be ‘your cup of tea’. At meal’s end, cognac, single malt scotch or nighty-night may be more appropriate.

In addition to the normal process of making high residual sugar sweet wine, there are other ways that wines can be made sweeter that I will only briefly touch on for completeness. Those include adding sugar before fermentation (chaptalization), adding alcohol, usually brandy or neutral distilled spirits, before all the natural sugar is fermented (fortification) as in port or sherry, removing water to concentrate the sugar by drying the grapes to varied degrees (raisinate) as in Italian amarone and vin santo, by freezing the grapes as in German Eiswein or by encouraging a fungal infection, Botrytis cinerea, to desiccate the grapes referred to as noble rot*.

As referenced above, the most common fortified wines are port and sherry although many other examples exist. Fortification serves two primary reasons; it helps to preserve the wine and it increases the alcohol content. Note that port wine, for instance, is typically in the vicinity of 20% alcohol by volume. As a bonus to the higher alcohol, one can keep an open bottle of port with its cork in place, with no additional action taken for preservation, for weeks with no noticeable deterioration.  Note also that port wine is available in several different styles.  The most expensive and exotic is vintage port, which is not available every vintage. It is produced (referred to as declared) only in exceptional vintages, typically two or three times per decade. Vintage ports can easily age and improve for decades. Excellent 50-year-old vintage ports are not uncommon.  However, aged vintage ports will always require decanting. Other port styles are ruby port, tawney port and LBV (late bottled vintage). Tawney port is available as basic, 10-year-old and 20-year-old. They are blends of multiple vintages and the label age represents an average age of the vintages used. The older the tawney, the more time spent aging in small wood barrels. LBV is most like younger vintage port and is made from grapes of a single vintage and spends 4-6 years aging in wood prior to bottling. All port wines come from the Douro River valley in Portugal and are made by a handful of producers from the same group of approved grape varieties.

Sherry is also available in different styles, most notably dry and sweet. Sherries are primarily produced from the palomino grape (about 95% of all sherry) and are exclusively made in the appellation of Jerez on the south coast of Spain. More common dry sherries include fino, amontillado and oloroso. However, for those looking for a sweet sherry (to fit with the context of this article) seek a cream sherry or a pedro ximénez (known as PX).

Adding distilled spirits to a fortified wine can take place at various times in the fermentation process resulting in different levels of sweetness and alcohol content as dictated by the desired end product.  Let it suffice to say that many nuances of the process exist and will not be discussed in any more detail for this rambling. To be honest, it's actually above my pay grade. Hard to believe I know, but true.

Now, let’s go back to the more typical type of dessert wine, those that are not fortified. Conventional dessert wine can be made from pretty much any grape in any grape growing region of the world. The majority of dessert wine is white and the most common grapes utilized are reisling, semillon, gewurztraminer, muscat and sauvignon blanc.  The best-known sweet wines in the world come from France (Sauterne and Barsac from Bordeaux), from Germany (Rhein and Mosel regions), from Hungary (Tokay made from fermint grapes from the Tokaji district), from Italy, Vin Santo (made predominantly in Tuscany from Trebbiano and Malvasia grapes). The US, Canada and other countries also produce dessert wines using various approaches mentioned.

Different producing regions utilize different lables to differentiate degree of sweetness (or none at all).  French Sauternes and Barsac (produced entirely via noble rot approach) typically range between 12% and 22% residual sugar with no intermediate classifications.  The most famous (and expensive) sauterns from France and highly collectable worldwide is Chateau d’Yquem.  The most recent vintage is 2021 and on release, generally sells for around $200 for a 375 ml bottle (half bottle). This wine perennially garners a score between 97 and 100 points and, as is the case with many of the better dessert wines, will age gracefully for many decades.

German dessert wines are categorized as spätlese (late harvest), auslese (select harvest), beerenauslese (berry select harvest), trokenberenauslese (dry berry select harvest) and icewein in increasing sugar content. Spatlese typically is 17-20% residual sugar while trokenbeerenauslese is in the vicinity of 30%. German dessert wine prices are all over the map but for those wishing to sample a great example I would try a Dr Loosen beerenauslese, $28/187ml at Total Wine.

Hungarian dessert wines are also produced via the noble rot approach.  Their sweetness is classified by a designation called puttonyos (loosely, baskets of sweet grapes) and ranges, increasingly, from 3-6 with 5 puttonyos representing about 12% - 15% residual sugar, for reference. A 5 puttonyo 500 ml bottle will set you back between $55 and $125.

Italian Vin Santo is made mainly by drying the grapes to raisin like appearance in a process that can take several years depending on the producer. Because of this producer variability, residual sugars vary significantly from high alcohol (18%-19%), almost dry wine to more typical 18-22% residual sugar at only 14% alcohol. Vin Santos can be had for anywhere from $25/375ml to $125/375ml depending on quality.

In the US, dessert wine was fairly popular prior to prohibition but as the quality of US dry wine improved dramatically post prohibition, consumption of sweet wine fell out of favor.  In the heyday of the California wine revolution (1970s and 1980s) there were only a few dessert wine producers of note. Joseph Phelps Winery in Napa annually made numerous wines they labeled late harvest, select late harvest and IDBSLH (individual dried bunch select late harvest). Their wines were made from riesling or scheurebe (a German/Austrian grape with very limited US plantings, pronounced shoy-ray-ba). At that time, in my opinion, their dessert wines were one of two producers that stood out for American offerings.  Chateau St. Jean in Sonoma was the other producer making several single vineyard dessert wines of excellent quality.  In 1985 Far Niente started their now iconic offering of Dolce, a late-harvest blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon aged for 32 months in French oak barrels. Dolce, typically around 11% residual sugar, today is still one of the best dessert wines made by a US producer (about $60/375ml).  Today, Joseph Phelps regularly produces only a single excellent dessert wine, called Delice (about $65/375ml), still made from estate grown scheurebe. Chateau St. Jean still makes an excellent single vineyard Belle Terre late harvest riesling (about $60/375ml).

As wine making proliferated to many other parts of the US, riesling plantings became more prominent. Noteworthy were those around the Finger Lakes of NY.  With that explosion of riesling production came many more dessert wines to which, I am sorry to say, I have very limited exposure.

Regardless of the country of origin, dessert wines made from white grapes have a common thread; their rich, exotic plethora of mind-boggling combinations of aromas. Expect to be engulfed with a nose of hedonistic combinations of tropical fruits, apricot, orange blossom, butterscotch, caramel and honey. SWEET DRINKING.

PULL QUOTE: “Drinking good wine with good food in good company is one of life’s most civilized pleasures”  - Michael Broadbent, British Master of Wine, Author & Critic