Dessert Wine Styles Everyone Should Know

Hi everyone this is Agnesa from No Sediment and today we're going to talk about few dessert wine styles everyone should know. Where I come from it is cool to hate sweet wines. Maybe it is because there are so many bad examples that are just sweetened alcoholic beverages. I'm not a fan of desserts myself however I love a good glass of sweet wine at the end of the meal and there are few styles worth mentioning. However I will be excluding fortified wines because that is a story for another day. Most of the time good quality dessert wines will acquire their sweetness naturally. One option is delaying harvest and picking grapes later in season when they have acquired higher natural sugar content. However winemaker needs to be sure of the autumn weather. Ausleise and Spätleise Pratika wines from Germany, Vendache Tagdil from Alsace in France are few great examples of these wines. Harvesting grapes and leaving them to dry in well ventilated rooms is another option. This way water evaporates and sugar concentrates so winemaker can make beautiful sweet wines that will smell of dried fruits. Racciotto and Pasito sweet wines from Italy are the most common examples of sweet wines made from dried grapes. Only few wine growing regions are capable of producing ice wine. For ice wine to be made the grapes are harvested during the winter at night when the temperature drops below zero. When these frozen grapes are pressed water is removed in form of ice crystals. That way the juice obtained is highly concentrated elixir. Canada and Germany are the two wine growing regions highly associated with production of ice wines. Last but not least are the luscious sweet wines made from butchertized grapes. Botrytis is a form of fungus that in dumb conditions can lead to grape rot. However when those conditions are right with misty and foggy mornings and sunny dry afternoons this fungus does miracles. It concentrates all the sugars and alters the aromatics of the grape therefore the wine will smell beeswax, saffron and sweetened chamomile tea. The greatest examples of these fine wines will outlive myself. Saturns from Bordeaux, Trocadero from Germany, Tokaj in Hungary and Ausdruck from Austria are only few great examples of sweet wines made from butchertized grapes. Due to the sweet wine in popularity this is also the best time to invest in dessert wines. The amount of work that is invested in the sweet wine production is huge however the prices are still very affordable. Cheers! I hope you guys see the tea.