Show Notes
Episode 108: Sweet Dessert Wines for Your Sweetheart! 00:00
Hello! And welcome to The Wine Pair Podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and my wine pairing partner in crime, Carmela. And we are The Wine Pair!
Ok, a quick orientation for those of you who may be new to the podcast - in each episode we learn about, taste and give our honest review of three wines that are reasonably priced - meaning under $20 each - and should be easy for you to find. And our podcast is made for people who want to learn more about wine, find new wines to enjoy, get some advice on what foods to pair with specific wines, and just want someone to talk about wine in a fun way that regular people can understand and use in their daily lives. So, if that sounds like you, you are in the right place! And we are proud to say that we are recommended by the editors of Decanter Magazine who call us fun, irreverent, chatty, and entertaining
Alright, Carmela, this week we are going to do something we have never done before in our podcast, and that is - we are going to focus on dessert or sweet wines. Now, you can probably guess why we are doing it - yes, you are correct, it is, as we said in our intro, because we are nearly at Valentines Day, and what better way to celebrate that day with someone you are sweet on than to serve some sweet wine?!?
But why have we never done an entire episode on sweet wines?
Well, in general, we just don’t drink a lot of sweet wines. In fact, it is a pretty rare occasion when we drink a sweet wine. Part of it for me is that I just really don’t love sweet wines, and I have never really loved dessert wines. I want to love them, but I just can’t find the taste for them. But maybe that’s because we have not tried them enough?
Maybe.
To be honest, when we first started drinking wines, we kind of gravitated to sweet wines, especially sweet sparkling wines, which, by the way, is not what we are reviewing today.
Those wines, like an Asti Spumante or similar extra-dry or sweet sparkling wine, are very, very easy to initially like. They taste great, are very accessible, and often have a much lower level of alcohol, and the alcohol can be a little off-putting for some people, as can the tongue-drying and sometimes bitter aspects of regular dry wines.
However, and you say this a lot, those wines can get tiring, and they are also hard to pair with food, or at least with main course foods, and so the occasions on which we drink them are pretty rare. I just associate wine with dinner or a main meal, and that is what the vast majority of wines sold are pointed toward, and the main way in which we drink them, but I think some of that is cultural as well. Maybe a lot of it.
How many of you have ever served, been served, or ordered a dessert wine? Probably very few if any of you. And I think a lot of that is because it is just not something very popular in our culture, at least not today. In fact, according to a website called tastewise, only ,17% of restaurants, and I am assuming this is US restaurants, offer dessert wines on their menus. That is not a lot, and probably just indicates more about the current cuisine culture right now than anything else.
But some of the most expensive, prestigious, and longest-lasting wines are dessert wines, like Port, or Sauternes by Chateau D'Yquem, and Tokaj. And I will also say I rarely have them, but we have really enjoyed Ice Wines from Canada, and your brother and dad will sometimes bring out a Vin Santo or Port. So there is something I feel like we are missing in our appreciation of dessert wines.
So, we’ll talk about what we might be missing about dessert wine over the next few minutes, and then we have three different sweet dessert wines we are going to taste and review . . .
But first . . . we have to do our shameless plug.
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And, as we do every week, we’ll tell you someone we think you should tell about The Wine Pair Podcast. This week, we want you to tell anyone who loves sweet things - whether that is sweet drinks or sweet treats - and let them know that they might be really interested in dessert wines, and then send them this episode!
ARTICLES and LINKS
Topic: Why Would You Drink a Dessert Wine? 9:13
We are not going to drain the topic of dessert wines today because there is so much to cover, Carmela, so I am sure that is something you are very happy about. There is a lot to talk about on the subject, so we’ll return to it sometime in the future, but for today, I would like to talk about why you would even think about drinking a dessert wine.
The first thing I will say is that the classic dessert wines we are talking about and drinking today are mostly fortified wines. Now, sometimes wines that are sweeter actually have less alcohol in them, which is what makes them sweet - the yeast has not turned all of the sugar into alcohol. And not all dessert wines are fortified - there are actually lots of processes for making sweet wines. For instance, one way some sweet wines are made is by leaving the grapes on the vines for a long time while the weather turns cold and they freeze, and then squeezing the juice out of them in that frozen state. And there are tons of different styles of dessert wines. But for wines like Port and Cream Sherry, which we are trying tonight, these are fortified wines.
I have a few articles in our show notes, but fortified wines are wines where they add a distilled spirit (specifically, a grape spirit such as brandy or cognac). Fortifying wine is actually an ancient practice that allowed wines to stay drinkable longer. For a wine like Port, they add brandy to the wine before it is finished fermenting which makes it very sweet. With Sherry, they usually add brandy or some other spirit after the wine has fermented which makes it a little more dry. In general, these wines can be in the 17%-22% alcohol range, so these are sippers, and not wines you glug.
But we have not gotten to the main topic which is why or under what circumstances would you drink one of these dessert wines?
First, if you want to pair something with desserts, dessert wines are a great choice. Why do you think they are called dessert wines, afterall? In fact, some people would even say that the dessert wine is the dessert, and any food you may serve them with are really the complement to the wine. If you don’t want to serve coffee, and you went to the trouble of buying or baking a beautiful dessert, you may find that the flavors are just enhanced by a dessert wine.
Another reason is that it is just a fun experience. While it may not be something you do all the time, there is joy in exploring foods and cuisines and eating, and if you want to top off a fancy evening or treat someone you love to something different and new, trying a dessert wine with some chocolate cake or a dark chocolate truffle is just fun. And fancy.
But I think the most important reason why, and why I would recommend it, is because it makes the meal last longer. We are a little too used to having dinner with family and friends and sort of bolting after dessert is served, or even before. How many times have you gone out to dinner and the server has come by with a dessert menu and you just passed on dessert? Probably the vast majority of the time. Or how often do you go to a restaurant and it’s just sort of clear that they want to serve you fast and get you out of there so they can turn your table?
But we need to take a page out of the book of our friends from Europe and other countries where a meal is meant to be long and savored and have more desserts and enjoy the last part of the meal as much as the first and main parts of the meal.
In fact, I would bet that a lot of chefs think about the food they serve in their restaurants as three or four course affairs that should be enjoyed over hours and that conclude with dessert. I know you think about it, Carmela. You are a baker after all, but I regularly joke with you that you and your mom can’t even think about having a meal without also serving two to three desserts, but that I think in part is because we want the meal to last, and we want to create something that people enjoy all the way through.
So, I think you serve and drink a dessert wine because we need to slow down, relax, and enjoy our food and the people we are with a little longer. I need to think about that a lot more! You may not even like dessert wine, but dammit, you need to start liking it so you can enjoy your life more!
So, on that note, I think it’s time to learn a little more about the specific wines we are drinking today.
ARTICLES and LINKS
Dessert Wines We Chose for This Episode 16:18
As usual, all of the wines we have chosen for this episode are under $20, and all of them should be relatively easy to find because I bought them all on wine.com. You may not be able to find these wines at your local grocery store, but I can pretty much bet that you can find Port easily, and if you go to any decent wine shop, they are going to have things like Port and Cream Sherry.
I will also note that sometimes dessert wines are expensive, and sometimes you can also find them in half bottles or in 500 ML bottles, which is good. Smaller bottles will sometimes be less expensive, and although you can often store these high alcohol and sweet wines for a while after they have been opened, having a smaller bottle is nice because most people will probably not have a dessert wine every night.
And, on the note about storing the wines, a Port or a Cream Sherry can last 4-8 weeks after they are opened, while a wine like the orange sherry we are going to drink will last about a week if you keep it in the fridge after opening. I will say that there are lots of different types of Ports and Sherry’s, so you should research the specific kind of wine you have to understand how long you can store it unopened.
The first wine we are going to try is called Cockburn's Special Reserve Port, and is spelled like cock-burn. According to the folks at Cockburn, it is the most popular premium port in the world. So how about that?!? This wine has gotten good reviews, including a 92 from Decanter and a 91 from wine.com’s Wilfred Wong.
You may know this, but Ports are from Portugal, although this wine is handled by a British company. Ports like this can be high in alcohol, and this particular wine is 20% alcohol and is one third Touriga Franca, one third Touriga Nacional, and one third Tinta Roriz, all of which are pretty typical for a Port, and Ports are blends. A few other grapes you might find in a Port blend are Tintã Cão and Tinta Barroca.
I don’t have exact information on this wine because they don’t specify it, but Ports are very often blended across years, which keeps their taste pretty consistent year after year. I am just not sure in this case how many years they may have blended together for this wine.
This particular wine is aged in oak for 4 years before it is bottled, so these are rich, complex wines that are not for the faint of heart. Again, oak aging is one of the hallmarks of a Port, and one of the reasons why I tend not to love them - again, personal taste here - but overly oaked wines are just not my favorite. But we are keeping an open mind!
Ports are supposed to be great with dark chocolate, rich cheeses like blue cheese, or nuts. And you can serve them slightly chilled.
The next wine we are going to drink is Emilio Hidalgo Morenita Cream Sherry. While I have had Port before, I don’t think I have ever had a Cream Sherry. Where Ports are red wines, Sherrys are white wines, however the name of this wine, Morenita, means little brunette, and so this wine is more on the brown side of things.
You may already know this, too, but Sherrys are typically from Spain, and to be called a Sherry in Europe, they have to come from the “Sherry triangle” which is the southernmost part of Spain in the province of Cádiz.
There are 7-ish types of Sherry, and Cream Sherry is specifically made by sweetening an oloroso base wine to 11% residual sugar or more. Oloroso is a highly oxidized wine, and that means it is exposed to oxygen during the fermentation and storing process, which is the same in Ports. Most of the time, if you do that to a wine, you ruin it, but in this case, they do it on purpose. So, if you are not used to these wines, you may think they have gone bad. As the wine is stored in the oak barrel, some of the liquid evaporates and oxygen enters into the barrel, which is how some of the oxidation works.
This wine is a blend of 70% Palomino and 30% Pedro Ximénez, and is also a high alcohol wine at 17%. This wine is also aged for several years in American oak, so I expect this wine to be very strong and very oaky. You can serve this one slightly chilled as well, or even on the rocks - which may be a good idea if you are worried about getting plastered.
The last wine we are going to try is called Quady Essensia Orange Muscat, and this is a sweet orange wine - so you get a two-fer. A sweet wine and an orange wine all in one! This is also a half bottle, which is nice, and this wine is just 15% alcohol. Just.
Here is a little story about the wine from the winemakers themselves:
In 1980, Andrew Quady discovered a plot of unused Orange Muscat grapes in Reedley, California. His experiences tasting European sweet wines, his winemaking and chemistry education, and a risk-taking spirit led him to see what no one else saw in the varietal at the time: potential. In Italy, the Orange Muscat grape is known as "Moscato Fior d’Arancio," or "Orange Blossom Muscat," which has citrus and floral aromas with spicy citrus and stone fruit flavors. Quady set out to capture the very essence of these aromatic grapes, calling his new dessert wine Essensia.
Because it is an orange wine, the juice sits with the skins, and this wine is also aged for 3 months in French oak barrels.
Like other dessert wines, this is a wine you can slightly chill and that should go well with chocolate and cheese, but can also be a wine you can dip your biscotti in, or serve with fruity desserts like apple pie.
All right, that is a lot of info - so I think it is just time that we try these wines and let you know what we think, if they are good Valentine’s Day options, and what kinds of desserts they may pair with.
ARTICLES and LINKS
Port, Cream Sherry, and Orange Muscat Wine Pairing Tasting and Reviews 25:35
Wine: Cockburn's Special Reserve Port (Click here to learn about and buy this wine. Affiliate link to wine.com)
Region: Portugal, Douru
Year: NV
Price: $19.99
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 20%
Grapes: one third Touriga Franca, one third Touriga Nacional, and one third Tinta Roriz
Professional Rating: D 92, WW 91
What we tasted and smelled in this Cockburn's Special Reserve Port:
- On the nose: Syrupy, currant, raisin, church wine, cherry cordial chocolate, alcohol soaked fruit, dried fruit, Fig Newton, craisin, candied fruit, smells rich and sweet
- In the mouth: Raisin, cherry soaked in alcohol, cough syrup, caramel, chocolate, Brookside chocolate covered blueberries, IHOP berry syrup, spice, smoke, plum
Food to pair with this Cockburn's Special Reserve Port: dark chocolate, chocolate torte, flourless chocolate cake, chocolate cheesecake, blue cheese, cheese plate with nuts, chocolate ice cream
As a reminder on our rating scale, we rate on a scale of 1-10, where 7 and above means that we would buy it, and 4 and below means that we are likely to pour it down the sink, and a 5 or 6 means we are likely to drink it and finish it, but we are probably not going to buy it.
Cockburn's Special Reserve Port Wine Rating:
Crowd Pleaser
Wine: Emilio Hidalgo Morenita Cream Sherry (Click here to learn about and buy this wine. Affiliate link to wine.com)
Region: Spain, Jerez
Year: NV
Price: $15.99
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 17%
Grapes: 70% Palomino and 30% Pedro Ximénez
Professional Rating: WS 91, WE 90
What we tasted and smelled in this Emilio Hidalgo Morenita Cream Sherry:
- On the nose: Raisin, alcohol, church wine, Marsala, caramel, burnt caramel, caramel popcorn, salt, creme caramel, creme brulee, complex, fig, spice, fig jam
- In the mouth: Church wine, very pronounced ending, Marsala, salted caramel, burnt butter, kettle corn, dry, medium bodied
Food to pair with this Emilio Hidalgo Morenita Cream Sherry: vanilla ice cream, kettle corn, berry pie, biscotti, pizzelle, Christmas cookies, salty chocolate chip cookie, shortbread,
Emilio Hidalgo Morenita Cream Sherry Wine Rating:
Wine: Quady Essensia Orange Muscat (Click here to learn about and buy this wine. Affiliate link to wine.com)
Region: California
Year: 2021
Price: $15.99
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 15%
Grapes: Orange Muscat
Professional Rating: D 91
What we tasted and smelled in this Quady Essensia Orange Muscat:
- On the nose: dried apricot, fruit shampoo, stone fruit, orange, orange blossom, Fanta orange soda
- In the mouth: Orange soda, juicy, orange liqueur, fresh orange, clementine, orange candy, good summer sweet wine
Food to pair with this Quady Essensia Orange Muscat: dried fruits, nuts, cookies, orange biscotti, shortbread, filled croissant, Easter bread, sfogliatelle, Panatone, fruit cake, Trappist Abbey fruit cake, raspberry Linzer torte
Quady Essensia Orange Muscat Wine Rating:
Which one of these are you finishing tonight?
- Carmela: Quady Essensia Orange Muscat
- Joe: Quady Essensia Orange Muscat
Taste profiles expected from Port, Cream Sherry, and Orange Muscat 46:33
- Cockburn's Special Reserve Port
- Decanter: Delicately spiced fruit cake bouquet. Dense and rich on the palate with plump plummy fruit. Tannic bite at the back.
- Wilfred Wong: This wine combines delicate black fruit and graphite in its aromas and flavors.
- Emilio Hidalgo Morenita Cream Sherry
- WS: This is bright for a cream Sherry, with green tea and singed ginger notes out front, providing heft to the date, raisin, caramel and charred bourbon barrel accents. The sleek finish lets the green tea edge reemerge, with well-embedded acidity for length.
- WE: Smooth and sweet, like a cream Sherry is supposed to be. On the nose, this one easily shifts from ripe apricot and peach fruit to nuts and saline. The palate starts with a blast of coffee and mocha and then folds in brown sugar and spice. Sweet, long and generous, with accents of cinnamon, clove and mild chocolate.
- Quady Essensia Orange Muscat
- WE: This lightly sweet and complex wine blends floral notes with honey, almond and peach-syrup flavors for a delicious mix that should pair nicely after dinner with cheeses and toasted nuts.
- D: Orange marmalade, tea leaves and buttery brioche nose. Zippy acidity on the palate with exotic fruit on a long finish.
Outro and how to find The Wine Pair Podcast 48:31
Ok, so, Carmela, it is just about time for us to go, but before we do, we want to thank you very much for listening to us - and if you haven’t done so yet, now would be the perfect time to subscribe to our podcast and also a fantastic time to leave us a nice rating and review on our website or Apple podcasts or other podcast service - and it is an awesome and free way to support us and help us grow listeners.
We would also love to hear from you about a wine you would like us to taste and review. You can, leave a message for us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com and you can join our email newsletter there, too, or you can just email us at joe@thewinepairpodcast.com and tell us about a wine you are curious about, or curious what we think of it. And, follow us on Instagram and Threads so you can see pictures of all of these wines we are tasting and reviewing.
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Alright, with that, we are going to sign off, so thanks again, and we will see you next time. And, as we say, life is short, so stop drinking shitty wine
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