5 common types of dessert wine

Dessert wines are a delicious way to conclude a meal, either on their own or paired with food. Here are five of the most common types.

1. Ice wine
Making ice wine, or eiswein as it’s called in Germany, involves allowing grapes to freeze on the vine. The fruit gets harvested and pressed while still frozen so that the juice released is concentrated and sweet. The best ice wines are crisp, intense and elegant.

2. Noble rot
This style of dessert wine is highly prized. To make it, dehydrated grapes covered in the fungus Botrytis cinereal are carefully harvested and pressed. The most famed noble rots are Sauternes from France.

3. Late harvest
Making this type of wine involves leaving grapes on the vine until they are extremely ripe and sweet. This wine has higher sugar and alcohol levels than other wines and a more complex aroma.

4. Dried grape wine
The traditional way to make this type of wine is to let the harvested grapes dry on straw mats. In some regions, however, they’re dried right on the vine. In either case, the resulting wine is imbued with flavors of cooked fruit, honey and spice. The most well-known type of wine in this category is Amorone della Valpolicella.

5. Fortified wine
This variety of wine has a distilled sprit added to it — usually brandy — either during or after fermentation. These wines can be sweet or dry and contain more alcohol than other dessert wines. Common types include port, sherry, grappa and vermouth.

If you’re pairing your dessert wine with food, aim for balance and flavors that complement rather than overpower each other.