Sweet/Dessert Wines - I Own them, but Never Open them

When I first started buying wine seriously, I included a number of sweet wines. I succumbed to the popular wisdom that you had to have dessert wines in a diverse collection. 2001 sauternes hit the market with tons of hype. I discovered tokaji! Back then I had dinner parties heavily influenced by my mother’s entertaining style (she taught me to love cooking, too, bless her), and that meant you always made dessert. You also always had bread on the table and made a pot of coffee after dinner.

So I accumulated a number of sweet wines in the cellar. My husband went through the same progression, though with more sweet vouvray and fewer sauternes. Now we have a few hundred bottles in the collection, not counting fortified wines (port, madeira, sherry). Know how many bottles of dessert wine I’ve opened in the last 10 years? Exactly 4. And one of those was brought to a friend’s birthday party, since he’s a big fan.

We just don’t open them. Partly, my entertaining style has changed and I no longer make dessert very often. I don’t like to bake and sugar late at night makes me sleep badly. I often want a “closer” after a meal, but these days it’s almost always something distilled – the thought of something sticky and sweet after a meal is not very appealing.

I’m curious what other people who’ve been in this game for a while have found when it comes to sweet wine. Has your interest waned? Grown? Stayed the same? I know almost everyone likes sweets more than I do. I also know that when newbies ask for buying advice, there’s always a few people who say “don’t forget the stickies!” But other than the big high octane reds, it strikes me that nothing gets left behind as tastes change faster than sweet wines.

For the sake of discussion, I’m specifically talking about truly sweet/dessert wines here, not off-dry like kabinett or spatlese.

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Lol, I was just pondering a similar thought a few months ago.

After that epiphany, I did start opening some. Half bottles. I think that is the trick with dessert wines unless I am hosting and its a crowd that appreciates them.

Otherwise, yup, they sit, and sit, and sit, and…

I’m trying to be more balanced with them of late.

A couple of thoughts (besides me loving dessert wines and wanting to buy some off of you):

  1. If you wait long enough, won’t they become dry or just off dry?

  2. I usually prefer dessert wines with strong cheeses and other rich and savory foods much more than sweet desserts. Some bleu cheese and Riesling GKA, BA, Eiswein, vintage Port etc. and some good TV is a wonderful time for me (especially now when we can’t have guests over).

I have exactly the same problem. Except that the number of sweet wines in your cellar is not so far from the number of wines in mine! Oh well, no surprise, I’m not in the same league. I stopped buying sweeties some time ago. The ones I have just sit there waiting for the special occasion that never comes. C’est la vie, I guess.

Jordan, good idea to have them with cheese. Could probably extend that to other tidbits.

funny but just last night, I opined, “let’s open a dessert wine.” I have the same issue as Sarah, worse w my small port collection—never open them. The 01 Gunderloch Nackenheim Rothenberg Riesling BA wasn’t even that good. As for future plans, the wines are ageless, so I’ll keep them, but tastes change and the good news is, that as one moves away from a wine style, someone else moves in—so sell whatever is no longer wanted.

Returning to the OP’s question, we also rarely drink them and they sit in the cellar . . . haven’t bought any in years except the occasional Donnhoff Eiswein.

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A few thoughts:

“Dessert” wines with dessert are usually too much. The Sauternes is dessert at my table.

Dessert wines don’t have to wait for dessert to be opened. Try a non-apricoty non-fruit bomb as an aperitif or to pair with roast chicken or with certain curries. Sounds counterintuitive but it often works.

Of any wine I find Sauternes holds up in the fridge for a few days. I have no interest in two-day-old Vosne-Romanée but Sauternes can be nursed awhile.

375s are a must. The reality is that unless you are hosting a dinner party for 10 it will be hard to work through a whole bottle. Usually one small glass is all people want.

Thanks for all your thoughtful posts lately.

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Sugar will sometimes become less overt for sure, but that’s more noticeable on something like auslese, which is not the subject of this discussion. I’ve had Y’quem from the early '20s, which was still pretty darn sweet - if it takes more than 90 years, it’s not particularly relevant. And I’ve never known sweet Tokaji to go dry or even drier.

The problem I have with sweet wine and cheese is that when I have cheese, I want to drink something with it, not take tiny sips from one small glass for an hour. I see no point in just a bit of cheese. :slight_smile:

Edited to add on that last point Jonathan’s take: “Well sure, I’d love to have 1 oz of Carles Roquefort and a thimble of Yquem. Then we can have our cheese course.”

I only have a few full size bottles and it is hard to find an occasion to open these. On the other hand 375’s are ideal and we go through 10/12 a year.

Do you drink them with dessert, or in some other setting? Asking for a friend. [cheers.gif]

Thank you for the kind words, Matt!

It was Sauternes that pulled my husband and me into serious wine drinking. In the first year of notes I have, 60% of the bottles we opened were sweet. These days, our Sauternes consumption is almost completely nonexistent. What does survive is: when we go to a restaurant with a fancy tasting menu (e.g. Baume, Benu in the Bay Area) that might be more difficult to pair with wine, we’ll sometimes bring a Sauternes and follow it through the entire meal. Sometimes it’ll even be a full bottle. I find there are often really interesting, unexpected accords that emerge with Sauternes…

Like you I find I don’t drink as many as I used to buy. There are so many great dessert wines it is easy to buy a lot as they are fairly easy to source and not generally super expensive. Luckily I never got too heavy in them but still sold quite a few as I had more than I wanted long term.

I do enjoy opening one with the pungo and then just having a small bit over a week or two. Then I always wonder why I don’t always have one open as just a couple sips fairly often is awfully nice. But then I finish the bottle and forget about it.

I’m in a similar boat. Though I’ve never bought a ton. I don’t even really look to pop German Riesling very much. It just never screams out to my palate.

Part of it probably is that I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. For instance, I’ve never enjoyed ‘stickies’ with dessert. It just feels like poured on overkill. Sugar on top of sugar. It’s been very rarely a good pairing when I’ve even tried it. In the vast majority of cases I find sweet wines and sweet desserts just clash.

I did buy some bleu cheese recently to polish off a half of an 03 Sauternes that I think needs to be drank. But I can’t say I’m super excited about it.

My interpretation of dessert wines has always been that they are the dessert. Sometimes they pair well with a dessert food item that has some fruit or even savory character, but most of the time we drink it on its own.

That being said, Spatlese and Auslese with age paired with spicy food (Thai in particular for us) is a great combo.

Same here.

Have 33 bottles of port, 24 of sauterne, 7 SGNs, A couple of Vendage Tartives,5 sweet Loire, a couple tokai, a few misc sweet (tirecuil)

Probably open one every three years. Primarily due to blood sugar concerns. I am also limiting my intake so it likely means one less glass of burgundy.

I love port, but serving it at the end of a meal if folks are driving doesn’t work anymore as folks drink less at dinner parties.

I enjoy it with fois gras at restaurants. But that’s the rare event these days, especially in California.

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Sarah

Anyone looking to downsize their collection of 2001 Sauternes half bottles is welcome to PM me or refer to my post in commerce corner :slight_smile:

Sweet wines can go well with some kinds of appetizers. Years ago Henry of Henry’s Evergreen introduced us to sweet Loire’s and his orange glazed shrimp appetizer. That concept can be extended.

And since they keep well opened in the fridge, you don’t have to consume them at a sitting, either.

But if your tastes have fundamentally changed over the decades, and these are now unpalatable in any situation, its a problem, likely only remedied by gifting/selling. It seems like sweet wines go for very little in auction markets, especially outside the trophy names like Nacional, Yquem etc.

Exactly, Arv, thanks for that. I don’t like them (or much of anything sweet) very much anymore, and I know that. I started the thread not looking for advice on how to increase my consumption, but to hear if other people have had the same experience or if there are a lot of folks who continue to drink these at a good pace. When I read the advice to newbies of “Don’t neglect the stickies!” I want to say “Go ahead and neglect the stickies - you’ll never end up drinking them!” Guess I’m trying to determine which side of that argument holds more water.

You’re right, too, about the auction market. There’s really very little point. And since, as Alan said, they last pretty much forever, I might as well let them sit there.

Sarah, I feel the same way, although I don’t have many really sweet wines left. I started out really liking dessert wines 25 years ago, but my palate seems to enjoy them less as I get older, so I hardly buy them any more and probably don’t open them more than 2-3 times per year. I occasionally like a glass of tawny port or something like that as a nightcap, but usually don’t want to open full bottles. Even with Germans, I generally prefer the balance on Spatlese now as opposed to Auslese 20 years ago.