| Cellar Master Notes |
A touch of liquid gold
Vintage Wines Private Limited, makers of one of India’s finest premium wines, ‘Reveilo’, have launched their dessert wine - Reveilo Late Harvest Chenin Blanc.
For Vintage Wines, the creation of Late Harvest Chenin Blanc was an act of serendipity. In early April, six months after pruning, the grapes had started turning into raisins. The Wine Maker’s visit from Italy had been delayed. When he arrived, he found inspiration in the bunches of sun-dried over-ripe berries for a delectable dessert wine. A selection of five tonnes of over-ripe grapes were then individually hand-sorted and made into 2500 litres of exclusive Reveilo Late Harvest Chenin Blanc Dessert wine.
The Late Harvest Chenin Blanc has a lovely golden hue and an underlying aroma reminiscent of honey and scorched almonds. These intertwine on the palate with impressions of liqueur and dried apricots. It is mouth-filling, rich and sweet, but has retained enough edge to provide it with perfect balance.
Though our first batch was fortuitous, we plan to continue with this wine range as it is being highly appreciated by premier dining establishments and wine enthusiasts†says Mr Yatin Patil, Director, Vintage Wines.
The term dessert wine is used to describe all wines that are mid to high quality, sweet wines that tend to be drunk after dinner or with dessert, or more appropriately as dessert, since many sweet wines actually don't go well when paired with sweet foods.
Sweet and dessert wines have been around since the early days of the Roman Empire, some say even longer. They may have been the first wines that traveled outside the region in which they were made. This is because many of them have higher alcohol levels, as well as the large amounts of sugars; both of which when combined help to make wines age and travel well.
Dessert wines are fascinating not only for their scrumptious sweet tastes, but also for the many complicated and unusual ways in which they are made. Most, but not all dessert wines tend to be higher in alcohol than regular wines. This is due to the large amount of sugars in the grape, the more sugar, the greater the final alcohol levels produced during fermentation.
Pairing Dessert Wine
A good general rule to follow is that the wine should be sweeter than the food it is served with. A perfect peach is an oft used example as an ideal partner for a dessert wine. A challenging example would be a chocolate or toffee based dessert. Dessert wines are often paired with a bakery sweet; consider a baked good with a hint of a bitter flavor, like an almond biscuit or almond topped croissant.
Chocolates, after-mints, strong cheeses like Stilton, Gorgonzola or other mustiness cheeses and rich biscuits at tea time.are wonderful companions to our dessert wine but it goes just as well as an after-dinner drink by itself.
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