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Wine Pairing

Best Dessert Wine Pairings

Best Dessert Wine Pairings

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Dessert wines are often over-looked yet can truly enhance your epicurean experience. Whether you want to buy your wine online, go into a store, or visit a winery – without the knowledge on good wines to pair with your desserts, you’ll come away with a wine that won’t heighten your dining experience as it should. A few simple guidelines should make it a fun exercise! The golden rule for pairing wine with with desserts: The wine should be sweeter than the dessert. Then, match the flavor intensity of the dessert with the flavor intensity of the wine.

Firstly, back to the golden rule for pairing wine with desserts – the wine should be sweeter than the dessert. Secondly, match the flavor profile of the dessert with the flavor profile of the wine. Here are more specific tips:

  • PX (Pedro Ximénez) – this is a luscious Spanish dessert sherry wine made from dried grapes. This wine is so sweet with strong flavors of raisins and molasses, it can simply be poured over vanilla ice cream. Pair with bread pudding, white or dark chocolate desserts, and orange flavored desserts.
  • Sauternes – Sauternes are characterized by a balance of sweetness with the zest of some acidity. Common flavor notes include apricots, honey, peaches but slightly nutty. Try a Sauterne with Creme Brûlée, apple tart tatin, peach pie, or an English Trifle.
  • Ice Wine – Or, Icewine, are refreshingly sweet with high acidity. They typically have a medium to full body with a long lingering finish. The nose is usually reminiscent of pear, peach, dried apricot, citrus,honey, figs, caramel, and green apple. Riesling style Ice Wines, which are quite common, can be paired with key lime pie, lemon tarts, fruit tarts, or fruit-based creme brûlée. Or, drink all by itself.
  • Tawny Port – A Tawny Port with it slightly sweet yet nutty, caramel flavors pairs well with fruit cakes, mince pies, and eggy pastries including custards and flans.
  • Ruby Port – Try a Ruby Port, which has fruity notes and easy tannins pairs well with a decadent but not too sweet chocolate dessert. It goes with a chocolate cake with a raspberry sauce, or a dark chocolate fondue, or a simple chocolate brownie.
  • Late Harvest Zinfandel – Find dried cherry and chocolate notes in Late Harvest Zinfandels. These dessert wines go well with of course chocolate and chocolate desserts. Also try it with cheesecakes, cherry pies, and carrot cakes.

One last rule of thumb – leave room for dessert!!!

Wine Tasting Basics

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Wine Pairing BasicsWho doesn’t love wine? It’s got a refined taste and can help make the good times flow! Of course, sometimes you’ve got to ask yourself how much wine is too much so you ensure you’re only consuming a healthy amount each week. But, if you like to treat yourself then going on wine tasting evenings can be the perfect way to learn about and enjoy new wine. However, due to lack of experience many of us quietly sit back in wonder as we watch wine aficionados, swirling their glasses and swishing the juice of the Gods between their cheeks. Some people just pick one at random out of their IWA Wine Cabinet and hope for the best. The cabinet they have might look impressive, but their wine knowledge might be lacking in knowledge.

Attending a wine tasting can be a fabulous, glamorous, fun event that you can absolutely enjoy as long as you take a few things into consideration.

First off, don’t be intimidated, and do not forget your Washington fake ID! The sommelier is likely the only person who’s spent any significant time learning about the ins and outs of wines, everyone else is pretending like they know what their doing so you can too.\

Do a wine-tasting practice run at home so you’re all ready for the big day. It will help you figure out which wines are the finest and most worthy of ordering through a denver wine delivery service.

Step 1

Choose the right glasses for your wine. If you’re doing reds you want to have nice big glasses, meanwhile whites deserve the standard wine glass.

When you open your bottle of wine, let it sit and breathe for 10 mins.

Step 2

Smell the wine when you first open it to determine if it is good.

The following are signs that your wine is probably not going to be good:

A strong vinegar smell means there was a problem with the wine-making process or bottling process which in turn has created acidity in the wine. If it smells very acidic it will taste like vinegar.

If your wine smells like a wet dog or a wet basement, there was likely a problem in the wine-making/bottling process and in turn has left you with a bad wine.

Step 3

Fill your wine glass one-quarter of the way up.

Step 4

Check out the color of your wine like a true professional to determine wine quality. If you tilt the wine glass to the side in front of something white you’ll be able to get a better idea of the color. If a white wine is brown, you have a problem. However if a red wine is dark that’s just fine. Whether red or white, the wine should be nice and clear. If there is something akin to a sediment sitting at the bottom of your red wine glass it’s normal.

Step 5

Always hold your wine glass by the stem. Holding your glass by the bulb will warm the glass and in turn warm the wine. Just holding your glass in this manner will put you steps ahead of the other tasters.

Step 6

Give your wine a little breather by swirling the wine slowly around in the glass while holding the stem of the glass. The swirling will also provide you with scents. If the wine appears to hang on to the sides of the glass that’s a good thing. A thicker wine indicates it is likely one that is full-bodied, which in the business they call having legs. A leggy wine is likely one with good alcohol content.

Step 7

Continue your wine swirling to get the scent notes. Your wine can have layers of scent s that range from woody to fruity. Some wines like a good Syrah will give you an interesting spice layer.

Step 8

Now it’s time to taste – and remember if you’re doing a wine tour, you’re going to just taste not swallow. Take a sip of the wine and roll it around on your tongue so you get all of its notes. Once you’ve noticed all of its nuanced flavors you should spit it out into a spittoon. If you’re at your last tasting or enjoying wine at home then go ahead and sip of course.

Step 9

Aspirate yourself. Before taking a sip of the wine, purse you lips and inhale through the mouth and out through your nose. This gives the wine a chance to mingle with your mouth and directly reach your nose by going through the mouth and into your nasal.

Step 10

If you go to this wine tasting with a group of amateurs this step will be just fine. However if you’re mingling with aficionados you may feel out of place, but don’t. You want to take a sip of wine and air at the same time and you’ll see what a change a little air can make. This experience will bring out the gourmand in you.

Step 11

If you’re still tasting the wine a minute after you have already swallowed, this is a great sign! This means your wine has a – LINGO ALERT – nice finish. That’s exactly what you say too. If your wine gives full flavour anywhere from 40 seconds to a minute after the sip you can indeed say that’s a good quality wine.

Step 12

If you really want to impress your fellow guests, do a little refresher pf the vaious tastes you’re set to encounter:

Syrah – spicy and dark with layers of black pepper.

Cabernet – full body read with delicious, bold fruits like cherry.

Merlot – nice red with plum, floral and spices.

Zinfandel – Dark fruits

Pinot Noir – A nice delicate red with light fruit with earthy, peppery flavors.

Sauvignon Blanc – Nice white with hints of grapefruit

Chardonnay – nice white with fruity flavors with two styles – buttery or crisp and fresh

Wine Pairing

Wine Pairing Basics

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Oh to have such troubles as choosing the right libation with the right vittles, this surely is a trifle of the modern world.

That’s enough of waxing poetic, the truth of the matter is that wine is great and food is great, but the manner in which you’re supposed to put the two together can be a downright mysterious. If you continue reading, you can learn to understand some of the basic pairings, if some of these pairings you’ve never tried before, perhaps take a look at something like this GraysOnline wine delivery or alternative wine delivery services and look to purchase some wines you so you’re able to test some untried wine and food pairings.

Well, you’re in luck, because we’re going to unravel that mystery and by the end of the article you will wax poetic about the harmony of the perfect grape accent on a cheese vestibule (or something close to that).

Meat Eaters

When you’re eating meat you need something hefty and powerful to balance out the flavors. A Beaujolais is one of those few wines that will fit the bill across a variety of meat dishes.

Going into particulars you’re going to want wines that are low in tannins like Beaujolais or Dolcetto.

On the flip side if you’re eating steak you can take in some tannin and enjoy the boldness. You’re going to find that boldness in a beautiful Bordeaux or Barolo, which after a sip and then a bite will get you humming M’ama Mia.

Chicken

A simple chicken dish deserves a simple wine that together provides harmony and a settled in feeling. A feathery Chardonnay will give you an almost perfect pairing with chicken every time. The only times you may want to stray is when you get into heavier chicken dishes with creams and fats, in this case you can go with a Merlot or Beaujolais.

Seafood

Delicate things like other delicate things in life and on the palate. So if you’re enjoying light dishes like a seafood dish you want to pair that with a light wine like a Chablis or an effervescent Pinot Grigio.

Sour Foods

If you’re noshing on something that makes your toes curl in sour ecstasy then take a sip of Sauvignon Blanc to further the good-oh-so-good.

Spicy Foods

If you’re whipping up some spicy Indian or Thai then you’re going to want to balance out all of those sharp (but delicious) flavors with something sweet. A great choice is a Riesling, which has a kiss of sweet with a whole lot of body.

Good ‘ol BBQ

Mesquite, sweet or honey garlic good, whatever you’ve got on the BBQ a Shiraz can handle for sure. Wines that have that special kickback spice note like Shiraz and Malbec are big and bold enough to handle the strong flavors a sweet smoky BBQ can bring. In fact the added spice those wines bring to the table can take your BBQ from ordinary to extraordinary.

Getting Cheesy

We all know about the love affair between wine and cheese, and we also know that some of the couplings are better than others. However, if you choose yourself a dry rose wine – you can’t go wrong. A dry fruit rose wine has just the right dimensions to have flings with all sorts of cheese types and keep them all happy all of the time.

Salty Foods

Bubbles and bubbles can make champagne fun enough to drink on its own, but when you pair this sweet treat with something salty … well Hello!

Sparkling wines always have sweet undertones which is why pairing them with a cut of cheese is just about the best way to accent their flavor and enjoy the bounty on your tongue.

Sweet Foods

And to end off your meal you are going to want a sweet celebration of all that was had and all that is going to ensue. Desserts are paired best with complex wines that provide just the right balance of sweet to accent your post meal dish.

Muscats are particularly lovely with dessert as are Madeiras and this may be a surprise but a Riesling doesn’t fare too badly either.

Food and Wine Basics

Although you may not be registering in a Sommelier school near you anytime soon, the information you’re now armed with will give you a head up on anyone else anywhere you go.

Although there are numerous other wines to explore, these basics we’ve provided in this introduction to wine basics will give you a perfect foothold in this little world of the perfect sip’n bite.

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