Dessert wine is a broad term that covers, literally, hundreds of types of wines and wine-making methods. There are dessert wines made in practically every country and region that make non-dessert wines, and there are a few common methods that are used. Understanding these methods will better help you understand dessert wine in general.
Instructions
1. Taste and identify a fortified dessert wine. The basic premise behind making a dessert wine is to maintain a significant level of sugar from the grape juice that is being fermented into wine. The different types of are differentiated both by which method is used to maintain (or, in some cases, add) sugar to the wine to make it sweet, and where these dessert wines are from. Most dessert wines are made by stopping the fermentation process before the yeasts have a chance to convert all of the sugars into alcohol. This can be done in a number of ways, one of the most popular being by fortification. This simply means adding alcohol to the wine from an outside source, raising the alcohol level of the wine to a point that kills off the yeasts (which cannot live in a liquid that is above 17-18 percent alcohol, generally speaking). With port, neutral spirits are added that up the alcohol content to around 20 percent. This is done before the sugars in the fermenting wine have completely converted to alcohol. The result is a very sweet wine very high in alcohol. Taste your port and you will see that the consistency is heavier and more syrupy than a typical dry red wine, and the finish, when you swallow, is "hot." This is from the high alcohol content.
2. Taste and identify "noble rot" in dessert wine. Another common way to preserve sugars in a dessert wine is by leaving the grapes on the vine until they not only dry out from exposure to the elements, but are infected with a growth that eats away the remaining moisture from the grape. This may sound like food poisoning, but the very nontoxic botrytis cinerea (also known as "noble rot") is highly prized in many regions, most notably Bordeaux. The Sauternes dessert wine is made from grapes that are infected with noble rot and are crushed after they have shriveled to almost nothing. The resulting wine is sweet because of the concentration of sugars in the very syrupy juice that remains. Open your bottle of Sauternes and taste it. While its sweetness is the most immediately noticeable element, there are many notes of citrus and wildflower that accent the palate.
3. Taste and understand low alcohol dessert wine. Perhaps the easiest way to make a wine sweet is to remove the yeasts from the fermenting juice before it has a chance to finish the fermentation process. This is the way low alcohol dessert wines like Moscato d'Asti are made. Moscato d'Asti is a slightly sparkling dessert wine with a low alcohol content that is achieved by manipulating the temperature of the juice as it ferments. By lowering the temperature, the yeast cells go into a kind of hibernation where it is too cold for them to work. At this state, the wine is "fined" (a filtration process used to remove yeast cells), and the wine is brought back up to temp and bottled. A tiny bit of yeast is left and the tank is sealed, which is what produces the slight fizz in Moscasto d'Asti. The alcohol content is usually around 6 percent. Try a sip of your Moscato and you will taste the lightness of this drink. It's due, in large part, to the low alcohol content.
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