The Spirit World

After a full meal of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and everything else that makes up our holiday table traditions, we don’t really need to eat another bite. But, sooner or later, most of us crave something sweet to end our meal. This year, instead of being seduced by the siren call of those perennial favorites – apple and pumpkin pies – perhaps a liquid dessert might be more refreshing. Dessert wines offer a lovely way to sip away the evening and provide a range of options from which to choose.

Building from the general principles of wine making in which wine is made from the partial or full fermentation of grapes through the conversion of sugar (in the grapes) along with yeast, into alcohol and carbon dioxide, several possibilities exist in producing a sweet wine. As grapes ripen, their sugar content rises and acid levels fall. The longer they stay on the vine, the higher the sugar content. During the fermentation process, the winemaker can choose to let all the sugar convert into alcohol, producing a dry wine or they can prematurely stop the process, leaving some residual sugar and thereby producing a sweet wine. If the grapes are extremely high in sugar, the fermentation process may halt naturally, as the yeast work too hard to convert all of the sugar and die off. Among sweet style wines, the consumer will find late harvest, ice, fortified and botrytized wines, which are described in more detail below.

Late Harvest wines
As grapes spend the summer on the vine, they continue to grow and ripen, with sugar levels rising steadily. The longer harvest is delayed, the riper the grapes become and the higher the sugar levels build up inside. With so much sugar present, the yeast will die off before it can convert all of the sugar into alcohol, again leaving a fair amount of residual sugar and thus sweetness. Late harvest wines are typically picked several weeks later than the usual harvest, leaving the grapes more susceptible to possible rot or ruin.

Ice wines
Hanging on the vine even longer than grapes selected for late harvest wines, grapes for true ice wines remain through the frost, with even greater risk for damage to the fruit. (Some commercial producers freeze their fruit off the vine as opposed to letting it happen naturally.) When successful, the frosty temperatures freeze the water in the grapes, thereby concentrating the sugar and fruit to create rich, sweet wines. The best ice wines come from Canada, upstate New York and Germany (eiswein).

Fortified wines
Fortified wines are those to which a neutral grape spirit is added. If the spirit is added to the wine before the fermentation process has been completed, the yeast are killed off and the resulting wine will be sweet due to the high level of sugar remaining (that which wasn’t converted into alcohol). The most well-known sweet, fortified wines are Ports and Sherries. The terms Port and Sherry are geographically specific, so truthfully, only wines from the Douro in Portugal and Jerez in Spain qualify to be labeled as such, respectively. However, in the U.S., it is legal to use these terms on American wines (as long as they are not exported to the E.U.) and you will find several “ports” on the North Fork, not including the Village of Greenport.

Botrytized wines
The vineyard has many pests that can wreak havoc on the vines from viral disease and insects to mildew and birds. Among these potential enemies, botrytis cinera can use its power for good or evil. Its evil infestation is known as grey rot and it will ruin the grapes and render them unusable. However, when this mold is facilitated by misty mornings followed by warmth and sunshine later in the day, it is transformed into noble rot. The mold forms on the grapes and working its magic, shrivels the grapes until they resemble raisins, thereby concentrating the fruit and sugar, yielding very concentrated, sweet wines. Conditions for noble rot are ideal in certain areas of the Bordeaux region of France, on which Sauternes has built its reputation. Botrytized wines can also be found in Austria, Germany and Australia.

Overall, the key to a good dessert wine is in its balance with acidity. The sweeter the wine, the more critical the role of acidity plays. To illustrate, the carbonation in soda serves to balance the sweetness of the beverage in the same way that acidity does in the wines. And, while many sweet wines are desserts unto themselves, they may also be paired with the final course of your meal. However, the trick is to select a wine that is sweeter than your food item.