Sweet wines are not everybody's thing. The rumour goes, that especially women like it. There are really some practical aspects, that opt for choosing a sweet wine for certain dishes, if you like it.
Sweets for my sweet...
Except of the famous sweet wines of the world, like Sauternes from Bordeaux, sweet wines in general have a rather infamous reputation. German wines before the eighties had the cliché to be sweet in general. Remember the infamous 'Blue Nun'? Thanks to well-organized marketing strategies of some German top wineries, this cliché is widely gone, although there are many German quality wines like Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese and Eiswein, which are very costy & prestigious on the international market today, because of their outstanding quality.
Today I'd like to introduce to you 3 international quality sweet wines, and we'll see how they go with certain foods.
The wines
Brauneberger Juffer Riesling Auslese
The Thanisch winery is a renowend German winemaker from the Mosel. The vinyard 'Brauneberger Juffer' brings out wines of great quality on regulary basis. This Riesling wine is an Auslese - which literally means selection. The grapes are fully to overripe when harvested. There is not neccessarily botrytis involved. Only the grapes of top quality are selected for this kind of wine. Grapes of lesser quality are sorted out. An Auslese wine can be dry as well, but here it isn't.
I found a clean & clear, lemon coloured wine, that is just in the beginning of a promising journey of some years to its peak. The intestity is medium. The taste is sweet (110 g / l), the acid seems high, but is actually medium (7.25 g / l), the alcohol is low with 7.5% vol., the body is medium, the intensity of smell & the taste are medium plus with just primary fruit flavours like mango, tangerine, apricot and peach with a medium finish. A really good value for money wine.
Yalumba Botrytis Viognier
A botrytis wine from my favourite varietal viognier comes from Yalumba Winery in South Australia from Eden Valley. Yalumba claims their wines to pair especially well with Asian food...ok, we'll see!
I found a clear & clean, but pale lemon coloured intense wine with mostly primary aromas like mango and rosewater and dried apricot, that showed me first & slight stages of ripeness of this wine. Acid is medium with 7.75 g / l, sugar is high with 140 g / l and alcohol is medium with 11 % vol. The taste brings some additional almond notes with the already detected flavours of the nose. This wine is full-bodied and intense with a long finish. Simply a great wine, that still can age a good amount of years!
Chateau dudon Sauternes-Barsac AOC
Sauternes wines of Bordeaux in France belong to the great, classic sweet wines of the world. Château Dudon might be one of the lesser known châteaux, but they make great wine without any doubt.
I found a clean & clear, medium golden, oily wine with primary, secondary and tertiary aromas - in spite of its young age. The smell is a synphony of honey, cooked pears and other candy fruits, overripe pineapple, walnuts, almonds, cream and vanilla. The taste offered even some more flovours like lemon curd, some smoke and some butter. All-in-all very intense on every level...very sweet and full-bodied.
The high sugar level is 166 g / l, the acid is medium with 7 g / l and alcohol is high again with 14 % vol. A typical Sauternes with a long finish.
Château Dudon is a 85% Sémillion and 15% Sauvignon Blanc cuvée aka grapes blend.
The sweet stuff
The basic rule for pairing sweet food with wine is: the wine is supposed to be something sweeter, than the food it is served with. So far so good...
Exotic Fruit salad & wine
This is real, natural and fresh fruit salad: Pineapples, mango, kiwi, oranges, rhaspberries, melon and a pinch of mint leaves. Naturally sweet & fruity. No sugar added - just the way I love it!
Apple pie & wine
The next level of sweetness: This is a classic apple pie everybody of you knows well.
French Patisserie & wine
This is highest quality sweet stuff: a small white chocolate tartlet glazed with orange sauce and inside that tartlet is a core of mango cream. In fact really sweet, but other low quality crap is much sweeter, because of much more sugar and less fruit used in the recipe.
The savoury & hot stuff
Another rule in pairing with food is: Put up sweet wine against hot food. Note that hot food oftenly is savoury, too.
Gorgonzola cheese & wine
For the good old classic gorgonzola cheese, sweet wines like a Sauternes or a high-quality Riesling is classically recommended, if you don't want a bold 'n' dry red with it.
The cheese is the only vegetarian food I tested here. The rest is all vegan.
Chinese Kung pao & wine
Many Asian foods have the components sweet, sour, salty, and oftenly spicy to hot. Therefore sweetish German Riesling wines are recommended for Asian food by many sommeliers, because these wines can handles all those flavours easily.
Thai Jungle curry & wine
Here it is basically the same like for the Chinese food, but the Thai food normally has some more & intense flavours. The Thai jungle curry can be the crown of spiciness. I cooked it hotter than the Kung Pao, but not as hot as it is originally in Thailand.
The results of pairing wine & food
These are my personal results & views on pairing these dishes and these wines above. Be ready for some surprises.
With the fruit salad, the wine is too dominating for the kiwi. The clash with the oranges makes the wine taste bitter. Also the pineapple, the mango and the rhaspberry brings a slightly bitter taste to the wine.
The apple pie tastes slightly bitter with the wine. The wine & the food bring out a marzipan-like taste, which is not bad...
The tartlet heavily emphazises the botrytis tone of the wine. The taste of alcohol comes forward on the palate. The white chocolate mousse is nicely emphazised by the wine.
I expected a perfect match with the gorgonzola cheese, but there only happend a friendly going hand-in-hand without any noteable interaction of the wine or the food...maybe a slight bitterness occured.
The Sauternes teamed up with the Kung Pao surprisingly well. The wine emphazises all aromas of the food decently. The only disadvantage is the high alcohol level, which stresses the spiciness a bit too much.
The alcohol and the barrique tone of the wine come way too much into the foreground. This is a mismatch with the really spicy Thai curry.
The unexpected winner in this match is the Sauternes with the Kung Pao. Not perfect, but good with Chinese food.
The Botrytis Viognier dominates the most components of the fruit salad. Rhaspberries and mango taste a bit bitter. Only the pineapple matches perfectly with the wine, and they dance the night away.
There is too much sweetness of the wine in my mouth, when I tasted the apple pie. Apart from that food & wine were level on level.
With the tartlet, the Viognier emphazises the orange-bitter taste too much. The white chocolate mouse reacts like a buffer to the wine. Clearly a mismatch.
In this Viognier-vs-Gorgonzola match, the acid of the wine comes way too much into the foreground. There's a slight bitterness around, too. They seem to match somehow, but they do not interact with each other.
The Kung Pao and the wine basically like each other much. The aromas of food and wine emphazise each other, but the alcohol stresses something too much the spiciness of the food.
With the Thai curry there is a certain emphazise of a fruit 'n' vanilla combo, that not everybody may like, and this is literally outstanding. Although it is a good match.
The best match with the botrytis Viognier is the Kung Pao. Yalumba wines actually have a good vibe on Asian food, but it shouldn't be too spicy.
This was where the real fun began: Putting the Riesling up against the fruit salad. This was almost a perfect match. The mango did outstandingly well, but the oranges tasted a little bit bitter, which was the only flaw here.
The wine was something too sweet for the apple pie. Apart from that, it was alright for that pairing.
The fruitiness of the tartlet is emphazised by the Riesling in a very good way. But the white chocolate mousse unfortunately buffers the wine.
For the gorgonzola and the sweet Riesling, I expected a perfect match, too. Both matched really well, but I missed the interaction between the wine and the cheese. The wine even stood something in front of the cheese. I experienced better matches with gorgonzola before, but It was a match.
Kung Pao and sweet Riesling basically go very well with each other. The problem here was, my Kung Pao was already too hot for the wine. The spiciness was too dominant. Sometimes less is more.
So with the Thai curry I now expected a bigger problem refering the spiciness. Not at all! The wine tasted like grape juice, and it tasted great. It really was a good match.
I think I should give the number one to the fruit salad, although the Asian food comes closely after it. Riesling and Asian food are simply best friends.
My overall winner is the Riesling. Besides, it was the cheapest bottle of all three wines. That proves, the saying is true: Riesling can stand up to every food well. It is the most versatile grape in the world.
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