Pairing Wine with Desserts
We all love to indulge our sweet tooth every now and then. And what better way to really treat yourself than to enjoy it with a luscious wine. Below we’ve categorised desserts into chocolate, dairy, nutty, fruity and sweet, to help simplify things when it comes to pairing wine with your favourite sugary treats and puddings.
Dessert Pairing House Rules
- Generally speaking, it’s best to match the flavours in your dessert with your wine, but it isn’t always best to match the level of sweetness (as the results can be sickly sweet!)
- Fortified, naturally sweet and dessert wines are a great starting point
- Oaked and aged wines with toasty, nutty notes work well with nutty desserts
- For red wines, avoid dry and stick to fortified
- For whites, stick to ones with a natural sweetness or honeyed nuance
- If the dessert is extremely sweet and syrupy, it can be good to contrast the thick, gooey texture with a crisp, refreshing sparkling wine
Types of Desserts
Chocolate
Chocolate can actually be surprisingly difficult to pair successfully with wine, due to its bitterness and high tannins. As wine and chocolate both contain antioxidants, it’s a careful balancing act getting these two to work in harmony. But once you do, it’s truly heavenly!
Chocolate House Rules
- Pair deep red, fortified wines with dark chocolate
- White wines pair well with lighter and white chocolate
- The sweeter the chocolate dessert, the sweeter you can go with the wine
Best Wines to Try
Fortified — Rich, full-bodied, pronounced flavours
Vintage Port, Tawny Port, Cream Sherry, Pedro Ximénez, Rutherglen Muscat
Whites — Sweet, long finish
Late Harvest Riesling, Eiswein / Icewine, Tokaji
Classic Wine Pairings
Vintage Port and Dark Chocolate Mousse
Dark chocolate is incredibly rich and can be quite bitter. It needs a strong, long-lived fortified wine to stand up to its bold character and punchy flavours. Vintage Port is rich and full-bodied with intense black fruit flavours that can handle a powerful dark chocolate dessert.
Tawny Port and Chocolate Cake
Milk chocolate is much milder than dark and far less bitter. Its flavours are still pretty dominant though, so it requires a fortified wine, but one with a lighter style. Tawny Port is lighter than Ruby or Vintage, with fewer berry fruit notes. Instead, Tawny can display a range of caramel, toffee, coffee and chocolate flavours, which work beautifully with a decadent chocolate cake!
Late Harvest Riesling and White Chocolate
Being the sweetest type of chocolate, you need to match white with a sweeter wine that blends well with the flavours, rather than being overpowered by it. Late harvest Riesling has been made from grapes that were left on the vine for longer than usual, producing overripe fruit with super high natural sweetness. The almost raisin-like grapes create a dessert wine that is delicious with white chocolate treats.
Nuts
Nuts have a subtle bitterness in flavour, with a creamy texture. Pronounced nut flavours can be matched with bolder wines, while desserts with a more subtle taste work better with delicate white wines that have developed their own nutty flavours through oak ageing.
Nuts House Rules
- Pair oak aged white wines with nutty flavoured desserts
- Sugary, nutty desserts can handle sweeter wines
- Sweet sherries display toast and dried fruit notes that complement nut flavours
Best Wines to Try
Whites — Oaked, aromatic, nutty, creamy
Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay (oaked)
Fortified — Rich, full-bodied, pronounced
Pedro Ximénez, Cream Sherry, Medium Sherry
Classic Wine Pairings
Pedro Ximénez and Coffee & Walnut Cake
Coffee & Walnut Cake is known for its distinct flavours. Pair with a strong fortified wine like Pedro Ximénez that has a bold enough flavour profile and mouthfeel to be a match for the bitterness of that coffee and walnut combo! Out of all the types of sherry, Pedro Ximénez is the most likely to display notes of toasted coffee and is also the sweetest, making it a great match for this dessert (and for cake generally!)
Oaked Sauvignon Blanc and Pistachio Dessert
An oaked Sauvignon Blanc will have nutty and cedar flavours that work wonderfully with a creamy textured nut like pistachio or cashew. Plus, one of the primary flavours of Sauvignon Blanc is lime, an ingredient often used with pistachio in desserts!
Oaked Chardonnay and Marzipan
When oaked, Chardonnay develops a creamy, buttery mouthfeel and often notes of marzipan and nuttiness too. This, of course, marries up very well with almond-based desserts. Serve wine chilled to really bring out those complex barrel-oak nuances.
Fruit
Fruit and desserts go hand-in-hand. From summer berry compotes and passion fruit parfaits, to apple crumbles, lemon tarts and dried fruit cakes. When pairing with wine, always make sure you’re enhancing these juicy, vibrant flavours and never overshadowing them.
Fruit House Rules
- Pair aromatic white wines with fragrant fruit flavours
- Choose wines with subtle sweetness that are on a par with the natural sweetness of the fruit
- Avoid red wines
Best Wines to Try
Whites — Sweet, aromatic, botrytis-affected
Riesling Beerenauslese, Sauternes, Gewürztraminer
Classic Wine Pairings
Gewürztraminer and Apple Crumble
This classic dessert works well with sweet white wines. Try a Gewürztraminer, which is inherently sweet in flavour due to its grape like aromas, but not overpowering in any way. It works especially well with the cinnamon in this dessert too.
Riesling Beerenauslese and Lemon Tart
Sharp citrus flavours of lemon can completely overpower the flavours of a delicate wine. So opt for a late harvest Riesling Beerenauslese, which has high enough acidity to match the zest, as well as having strong enough sweetness to balance the sour lemon.
Sauternes and Christmas Pudding
A lighter dessert wine like Sauternes is the perfect pairing for figgy pudding. Being a rich dessert (usually already containing a fair amount of alcohol anyway!), it’s wise not to go for an overly sweet or heavy wine like sherry.
Dairy
As a general rule, it’s always good to match flavours in your food with your wine. White wines that have been aged in oak barrels develop buttery flavours and aromas that work well with creamy, dairy-heavy desserts. Sweet white wines with nuances of honey also complement smooth, creamy desserts.
Dairy House Rules
- Pair white wines with delicate dairy flavours
- Choose oaked whites for buttery notes that match buttery desserts
- Sweet wines made from botrytis-affected grapes will have honeyed nuances that suit smooth desserts
Best Wines to Try
Whites — Crisp, delicate, buttery
Chardonnay / Chablis, Sauvignon Blanc
Whites — Sweet, botrytis-affected
Sauternes, Barsac, Noble Riesling
Classic Wine Pairings
Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc and Cheesecake
Sauvignon Blanc is different to other white wines in that it has a unique balance of spice and fruitiness. This mix of savoury and sweet makes it ideal for matching with a more savoury dessert like cheesecake. A late harvest Sauvignon Blanc will work especially well as it’ll be sweeter than usual, with honeyed nuances that complement creamy puddings.
Sauternes and Crème Brûlée
Pair this rich custard-based dessert with a lusciously sweet Sauternes from Bordeaux. Displaying notes of apricot and honey, this scrummy dessert wine complements the caramelised sugar topping of the Crème Brûlée, and is delicate enough to allow the vanilla flavour of the custard to shine through.
Oaked Chardonnay and Buttercream
Chardonnay that’s been aged in oak barrels develops buttery nuances and flavours, making it the perfect partner for a cake or cupcake with buttercream icing. It can also develop notes of vanilla when aged, making it even more ideal for pairing with classic sponge cakes.
Sweet
We’re talking toffee, caramel, treacle, honey and all those naughty syrupy desserts we like to indulge in once in a while. These tend to be super sweet cakes and puddings that require careful thought when pairing with wine. The trick is for your wine to subtly enhance the dessert, not crank up the sweetness and send you into some kind of sugar overdose!
Sweet House Rules
- Fortified wines work well with intensely sweet desserts
- But avoid fortified wines that are at the top of the sweetness scale
- Contrast sticky, syrupy textures in a dessert with a crisp, fizzy wine
Best Wines to Try
Fortified — Rich, full-bodied, pronounced
Tawny Port, Cream Sherry, Madeira
Sparkling — Dry, crisp, acidic
Champagne, Cava, English Sparkling Wine
Classic Wine Pairings
Tawny Port and Sticky Toffee Pudding
This famous British dessert is so super sweet it overpowers most wines. The mixture of chopped dates, toffee and sugar means you’re best avoiding the sweetest dessert wines (as this may well be too much of a good thing!) Instead, opt for a Tawny Port as it’s far lighter in style than other fortified wines, and also displays its own notes of toffee and caramel.
Madeira and Treacle Tart
Treacle Tart is sticky and naughty. Pair it with a fruity fortified wine that softens its syrupy sweetness. Madeira works particularly well as it’s a fortified wine that’s repeatedly heated during its production, resulting in a delicious blend of stewed fruit, caramel and toffee flavours.
Champagne and Salted Caramel
Quite the luxurious pairing! Champagne has a natural, yet subtle, sweetness that makes it fantastic for enjoying with salty desserts. Salt also balances acidic wine, which is why cool climate sparkling wines with naturally high acidity (like Champagne or English bubbly) work so well with salted caramel. The contrast in texture between the fizzy wine and smooth caramel makes this pairing even more satisfying.
