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

[Abbie_S]

I love dessert wines but rarely open them. I do think they make nice gifts and will buy a few bottles for friends/family if we are visiting wineries.
If my husband enjoyed them more, we would open them more often. We probably have about 30 bottles or so. Not too many.

[k_s_h_i_n]

It takes me a week to drink a bottle of sweet wine. No wonder Sauternes and Ports are not selling.

[Peter_Hirsch]

Same issue here.
I drink maybe 2-4 of these bottles a year, only when friends who really like the stuff come over. I own (according to CT) 160 bottles of sauternes / tokaji / port / madeira. Amazingly this is way way way down from a decade ago when I had close to 500 bottles.
Over the last decade I made a concerted effort to: 1) not buy any new wines in this category. 2) Give these as presents to friends who like. 3) Sell to friends who have asked.
In 2020 so far, I’ve moved 10 out the door. 2019 = 17. 2018 = 7. 2017 = 39. 2016 = 45. 2015 = 15. 2014 = 131. 2013 = 19. 2012 = 4. 2011 = 16. 2010 = 10.
I now own:
Port = 11
Madeira = 35
Sherry = 2
Aussie = 1
German = 4
Alsace = 3
Tokaji = 9
Monbazillac = 3
Sauternes = 95

And heading South from here…

[robert_creth]

I love the sweet stuff! In the last 2 months I have opened a 2006 Domaine des Baumard Quarts de Chaume, 2000 Alvear Pedro Ximenez, 1986 Lafaurie-Peyraguey Sauternes, and 2001 d’Yquem. I try to get 375mls only but will buy standard if I must. Tho I enjoy them with cheese and liver pate, I also just sip em like whiskey. I see these large format bottles of d’Yquem on auction and wonder, who is buying a 6 liter bottle? When could you open that?

[Curtis_Chen]

It takes me a week to drink a bottle of sweet wine. No wonder Sauternes and Ports are not selling.

Damn, that fast?!

[Ed_Steinway]

Robert Creth wrote:
I see these large format bottles of d’Yquem on auction and wonder, who is buying a 6 liter bottle? When could you open that?

Our late friend opened up a 6L bottle of d’Yquem for a birthday celebration in 2017. Despite having around 50 wine drinkers attending the dinner, there was a lot left over.

We have 3 dozen bottles of Sauternes and around 4 dozen bottles of Vintage Port. Most of the Port was bought for Birth-Years. We open a few bottles of Sauternes and Port each year, usually when we have other wine enthusiasts over.

Ed

[Keith_Levenberg]

I don’t have much experience with sweet wine but if it doesn’t pair that well with sweet dessert like cakes and such what actually does?

For example, chocolate cake

A tall, cold glass of milk

[TimF]

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

Same here.

[Marcus_Dean]

With foie gras or cheese. Great to begin or end the meal.

[Michael_Martin]

I don’t drink them often, but interestingly my highest rated wines on CT are all dessert wines. Maybe I should drink them more.

[Dan_Kravitz]

I am in the same boat. Used to love them, then like them, then not care about them, then avoid them. That’s where I am today.

Sally and I bonded over a case of 1967 Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos in the mid-70s (1 bottle left from the case). She also liked vintage Port with lots of bottle age (we drank our last 1960 Cockburn in 2010). Now she rarely drinks, mostly dry Rose, some reds (she owns a lot of Palmer) and occasional sips of Yquem from half-bottles gifted to us are the only sweet wines she tastes any more.

I probably own ~60 bottles of sweet wine, about half German high-level Auslese and up, the rest split between Sauternes and Port, with a few outliers. We’re holding a bottle of 1924 Zimmermann Tokaji Aszu 4 Puttonyos for another 4 years.

I’ve probably opened 8 - 10 bottles of sweet wine in the past 10 years, bought none and had 3 gifted. I look for occasions… but when we would have local friends over, who might like (depending on their age), Moscato or Muscatel, do I really want to open a half bottle of 1976 Clos-Haut-Peyraguey? On these rare occasions, my answer lately has been ‘yes’. They will enjoy if not appreciate it; Sally and I will have a sip and remember both how good it is and also how we simply do not enjoy sweet wine any more. There are some wines of significant value but I would never sell anything received as a gift.

What’s that bottle of Maximin Grunhaus 1959 TBA worth anyway? That’s the most valuable, but there are also TBAs (and more BAs) from Eitelsbacher, Vollrads, Fred’s Gym, etc.

Dan Kravitz

[Jan_Janas]

I don’t have much experience with sweet wine but if it doesn’t pair that well with sweet dessert like cakes and such what actually does?

For example, chocolate cake, pear crumble, tiramisu?

For me the key is that the wine has to be sweeter than whatever it is accompanying (if anything). I mostly drink dessert wines on their own or with blue cheese (depending on the wine; not all work, there are many types). For a sweet wine to work with dessert I find there needs to be a contrast in the food so if it’s a cake then a spice cake or similar. Pear and walnut tart seems to work well. Sometimes fresh figs. Chocolate cake or anything creamy do not work at all for me.

Basically change the dessert to make it less sweet. What about Champagne, does that work better? Maybe stuff with higher dosages?

I don’t have much experience with sweet wine but if it doesn’t pair that well with sweet dessert like cakes and such what actually does?

For example, chocolate cake

A tall, cold glass of milk

Full cream please!

[Kirk.Grant]

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.

Sarah,

I’ve been into wine for close to 20ish years now, but only discovered dessert in 2007 so I’m not sure if this will give you the feedback you’re looking for/expecting. Looking back in the years where I’ve consumed the most sweet wine I max out at about 13 bottles/year. Some years I only drink one. So my attempt has always to keep this in mind when I buy dessert wines. So for me that means in my 650ish bottles I have two 375ml & two 750ml of 2001 Sauternes, one Quarts de Chaume, & a few of the D. Dagueneau sweet wines. I usually aim to have between 1-3 bottles of dry sherry, 1-3 bottles of Madeira, and 3-6 bottles of Vintage Ports. I just opened my last '94 Port last year, so the next time I open a Vintage Port it will be a bottle I bought with age on it…or it will be from 2011 in another decade+. I often find that my efforts to build a balanced cellar means that there will be large gaps, that can either be filled with a little notice, or I drink them so rarely that I can have only a few to be there when I decide I want one.

I’m also not really an “every-day drinker”. I can go weeks without wine, and a few times a year it could be as long as 4-6 weeks. As to what to do about having hundreds of bottles you don’t see yourself drinking, I’d be curious to ask, “What would it be like for you to pull up a few bottles over the next month to check in on?” I’d encourage you to try opening a sauternes with something spicy…we make a spicy vegetable stir-fry that sweet wines work really well with…depending on your tolerance for heat/spice.

I don’t think I have opened a bottle of Madeira in 3 years…but my wife made chocolate chip cookies…and it was a nice shift for tonight. We will probably nurse this bottle for the next 3-6 months. Then I may open another bottle in 2-5 years. So I buy a bottle or a pair of bottles every so often.

[Brian_G_r_a_f_s_t_r_o_m]

I also want to add that I only got really into wine about a year and a half ago, so although I love dessert wine now (and all Rieslings), I wonder if that’ll change, similar to what many of you are describing. I’m kind of doubting it, since I’m in my 30s and still enjoy candy, I like to use brown sugar in some of my [meat] rubs, have honey on cheese, etc. (and my wife and I LOVE cheese), we we’ll see.

If anyone in LA area is looking to dump some Eiswein, BA, TBA, or even GKA Riesling, let me know!

A surprising (to me) good pairing for Sauternes is steak. It just works. Same with grilled, pork, particularly if you used a dry rub. Granted, that is, literally, never my preferred pairing for either of those foods, but it’s fun to try, and you might fall in love with that application.

[Brian_G_r_a_f_s_t_r_o_m]

I don’t have much experience with sweet wine but if it doesn’t pair that well with sweet dessert like cakes and such what actually does?

For example, chocolate cake, pear crumble, tiramisu?

Tawny port.
Madeira.
Sherry.

… and I do think Sauternes pairs well with some sweet deserts, but you have to be okay with the “sugar on sugar.”

Some friends and I opened a Sauternes many years back with various fruit sorbets and it made for surprisingly excellent pairings.

[Brian_G_r_a_f_s_t_r_o_m]

Sarah,

Same thing happened to me (although there’s a huge exception for sweet Rieslings (up to Auslese), if those count). Luckily, I never dove deep into buying them (but for a case of half bottles of the 2007 Myrat, which was purchased as an anniversary wine – a purchase I would not do again if I had the benefit of foresight).

We’ve 30 bottles of sweet/dessert wine in our cellar. I’ve purchased only one bottle since 2013, and that was only because it was an excellent deal on the 2010 Coutet, which I’d already tasted and know I enjoy. Rewind to 2013, and I find two bottles purchased of the same Coutet, and five bottles of various vintages of Moulin Touchais, which, given your husband’s former preferences, I assume you are familiar with and know it to be not terribly sweet at all. As for consumption: we’re around 1 to 3 bottles (full or half) a year, and those are primarily consumed out of a feeling that we’re obligated to do so, just to get them out of our cellar.

[Brad_Kane]

As you know, I love dessert wines, especially late harvest Chenin Blanc. With my usual group of dinner mates, it’s an unusual dinner when there isn’t a Huet, Foreau or some other Loire sweetie. While great with cheese, or your apricot and pear tart, food really isn’t needed to enjoy them. They’re just fine by themselves to cap off an evening.

[J_Rock]

Tonight I had a smoked Flannery Beef Kali burger topped with blue cheese and paired it with a big 2018 Zilliken Saarburger Rausch Riesling Auslese Goldkapsel (harvested at a whopping 126 Oechsle). Outstanding pairing! Before this, I haven’t really paired this big of a Riesling with my dinner, especially if it’s not spicy, but this proved to me that dessert wine should definitely not be reserved solely for dessert. Highly recommended.

[David_Glasser]

We rarely open a sweet wine, but not because we don’t like them. Over 40 years my palate has changed but my appreciation for sweet wines hasn’t waned. Usually it’s just too much wine to open a second bottle for the two of us. Or a third or… whatever if others are over. When we do open one it will often be 4 or 5 days before we finish it, but they hold up remarkably well in the fridge.

I prefer sweet wines as dessert instead of having dessert, but they can go well with fruit and nut based desserts. Pineapple, peach, and pear match well. Crème brûlée if I’m in the mood for a sugar avalanche. Like them with foie gras and lobster, lukewarm about the match with blue or other cheeses.

I never went overboard with sticky purchases and don’t feel overwhelmed by the amount in the cellar.

[Sarah_Kirschbaum]

… Sally and I will have a sip and remember both how good it is and also how we simply do not enjoy sweet wine any more…

This is a very good point, thanks Dan. It’s the same for me - when I taste one these days, I can both find it excellent and not really enjoy drinking it. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.