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What kind of wine you can serve next to a fruit dessert

As if planning the Holiday menu wasn’t difficult enough, everything gets complicated when you must think about drinks. What do you offer your guests when you serve a fruit dessert like a berry pavlova, a caramelized plum tart, or a strawberry cake?

A fruit dessert can prove to be a big challenge when you come up with your drinks list. Sweet and full of strong, acidic flavors, the dessert that contains fruit (especially berries) tends to capture all of the attention for itself, rendering the taste buds unable to “focus” on anything else. However, the wine needs a little more “attention” ...

Naturally, when you set the menu, you aim to be crowned “hostess of the year”, choosing dessert recipes that become more and more sophisticated. But you can achieve this title by picking wisely, without making things difficult for yourself. For example, a fruit dessertthat you can cleverly pair with the right wine.

It might seem natural to choose a dry or, at best, demi-dry wine when it comes to the right drinks to serve with dessert, but one of the basic rules – that only the experts are aware of – is that “the wine must be sweeter than the dessert” (more precisely, the dessert should ideally not be too sweet), according to the publication Food&Wine, citing the work “Wine Style: Discover the Wines You Will Love Through 50 Simple Recipes”, American wine expert Kate Leahy’s latest cookbook. In the book, she proposes a several recipes designed to pair with wine, devoting an entire chapter to desserts and dessert wines. The author mentions that there are special wines for this stage of the meal, providing as an example light, low alcohol sparkling wines that can “invigorate the taste buds and refresh the palate for dessert.”

So, if you haven’t chosen the dishes for dessert yet, you can freely take inspiration from the 50 ideas in Leahy’s book, wherein you will also find a surprising recipe for Focaccia with plums and rosemary, perfect with a Riesling with hints of apricot.

But what can you serve next to a Pavlova, the divine dessert with fine meringue, plenty of whipped cream, and fresh and tart berries? Try a sparkling wine as well, slightly fruity, a mouthful of energy, acidity, and freshness.

Tarts and fruit cakes – also extremely popular during the holidays – go with most sparkling wines or prosecco, and if some chocolate is included in the scheme, you can easily turn to red wines (if chocolate dominates, you can even choose a Pinot Noir).

Of course, if your menu is quite full, and you feel that dessert “doesn’t fit in”, you can serve only fresh fruit and sparkling wine – a combination as simple as it is well received. Berries and pomegranates, for example, pair well with sparkling and sweet Muscat wines, while extremely dry wines, such as Sauvignon Blanc, pair well with sweet fruits, such as bananas, grapes, or dried fruit.