Wine pairing for desserts can be great fun and it’s certainly nice at the end of a meal to bring out something original to inspire your guests. Desserts can range from heavy and buttery to light and sweet but what’s best and what are your options? The choices can go from Vintage port to sparkling wine and even champagne – depending on the importance of your dinner party, of course.
Vintage ports work well with intense flavours which is interesting because port itself is full of powerful tannins; serve port with stilton cheeses or dark-chocolate. One mistake not to make is to overwhelm your taste buds with too much sugar… so when pairing a sugary dessert with wine, try not to opt for something too sweet. You can easily ruin the intensity of the duo if both the dessert and the wine are sweet. You could try for example serving a Muscat wine to complement a vanilla custard, the slight sweetness of the Muscat will complement the flavours without making the couple too sweet.
However, if you have a really sweet tooth and are sure that your guests do too (it’s always worth checking), you can try serving your desserts with a Sauternes. This is a wine from near Bordeaux with many layers of complexity and one which is harvested late on meaning that, these wines have a high sugar content with a balanced acidity which go well with a vanilla slice or a crème brulée.
If you want to find out more about wine and food pairing, check out our articles:
https://planetprovence.com/2019/07/matching-food-and-wine-foie-gras-caviar/