Dessert Wine May Be the Perfect Finish

In my mind, one of the most overlooked types of wine in America is the dessert wine. Maybe we spent too many years seeing our parents consume sugary-sweet rose's to think that any sort of sweet wine can be good, but whatever the case - that way of thinking is totally off base. A nice desert wine, whether it's ice wine, a Riesling or a traditional dessert variety, can be the perfect way to finish off a meal. It's sweet, light and the liquid equivalent of a really fine cake, pie or sorbet (hence the dessert title). The Napa Valley Register has a great piece singing the praises of dessert wines. The author also provides a number of excellent choices for taking your first steps into the world of dessert wine. Perhaps Valentine's Day is the perfect time to start?

From The Register:

Serve a delightful dessert wine to dinner guests and you’ve taken midweek mundane to weekend wonderful.Whether accompanying a homemade tart or a summery fruit soup, a dessert wine can provide palatable lift to the final course of a meal. In fact, a well-made glass of sweet wine in the style of Sauternes, or a pour of top-grade late harvest riesling, might well stand in for a homemade dessert.Certainly the benchmark for New World dessert wines is Dolce, the exquisite late harvest “liquid gold” first created in 1985 by the partners of Far Niente (Gil and Beth Nickel, Dirk Hampson and Larry Maguire). Director of winemaking Hampson maintains Dolce is “an extraordinary wine bred from a combination of sunshine, soil, fog, expertise and dedication. Dolce embraces a simply deceptive philosophy — the pursuit of perfection in the art of late harvest winemaking.”