Other Dessert Wine

You can roughly split them into to groups. Late Harvest & Fortified wines.

Late Harvest wines either leave the fruit on the vine to concentrate the sugars, flavours & acids, and, may have some influence of Botrytis. The most extreme of these being the Eiswein made from frozen grapes in Germany. Pressing these grapes whilst still frozen leave crystals of water behind further concentrating the juice. Versions of Icewine are being made in Canada & the UK too.

This kind of result can also be achieved by picking bunches and drying them out on racks or handing them from the ceiling on strings. Vin Santo is a classic Italian Dessert Wine utilising this technique.

You can’t talk about Dessert Wine with out mentioning Hungry’s Tokaji! Made from the grape variety Furmint often blended with the aromatic varieties Hárslevelű and Muscat blanc à Petits Grains (locally called Sárga Muskotály).

Without a doubt some Australia’s most unique wines are the fortified Topaques and Muscats from Rutherglen in Victoria’s North East. Chambers perhaps my favourite of them all!