Dessert Wine for the Holidays: Pairing Sweet with Sweets

Class transcript:

On your luxurious accommodations. Where are you joining us from? Hotel Monaco in Baltimore. Got to rep our Kempton brothers and sisters. Yeah, exactly. Somebody please hashtag the Hotel Monaco so Zoe can get a free stay out of it. At any rate, Zoe's drinking out of a rocks glass, I'm drinking out of a wine glass, but I like to get a full sense of what I'm drinking first, you know, take a sip of that and then take a bite of my food, kind of you know, linger over that bite and then follow with another sip and I find that often that following sip is more instructive for the sake of the pairing than the initial sip would be.

So, you know, sip, taste, sip is the methodology that I like to use when evaluating these pairings and Annie Coleman, if you're in the mix, Annie's going to be our fabulous pastry chef who designed all of the vice that you're eating today. May or may not participate over chat. No pressure, Annie, if you are out there. We love you. Thank you so much for dialing up food to go along with this lesson. It was super fun to reverse engineer all these pairings with you. Without further ado, let us kick off this lesson. Zoe, you're raising your hand. What do you got for us? Are we not starting off with a poem today? Of course we are. Okay, okay. We were just giving people time to join the lesson, Zoe.

There's always a bit of verse. There's a lot of anxiety in the chat. That's all I'm saying. Oh, really? Oh, come on. People get very anxious. Okay. No, maybe I put the cart before the proverbial horse in talking over the pairings, but I just wanted to make sure people were ready with glassware and a modus operandi when it came to their wines first. But a bit of verse here, fittingly, devoted to Sauternes in particular and wines from great afflicted by Bratatisneria noble Urât, more broadly. This is from Mary Ponceau, who's equally an importer of wines and a gifted poet. It's called Peritur Noble, which is the French term for noble Urat, which we'll be addressing at length later in this lesson. A moral tale for Sauternes, the fungus scenario, and the wild old.

Never prophesy, you can't, so don't try. Lust, pride, and lethargy may cause us misery or bliss. The meanest mistake has a point to make. Hear this. What his vintner, Yekem, said once the Lord, Yekem, was dead. The wine that year promised bad or none. He'd let it go too late. Rot had crawled through all the vines, greasy scum on every cluster dangling at the crotches of the leaves. Yet the wine makers, the wine makers, thick gold, colored in pores like honey. We try it. Fantastic. Moral, age is not all dry rot. It's never too late. Sweet. Is your real estate, you know, and I love that notion for the sake of wines from grapes that, you know, fittingly on the vine in the case of noble rot can look, you know, spoiled.

Yet, you know, make, you know, these magical elixirs that rank among the world's greatest. One of my favorite quotes about sweet wine is this German notion that a great sweet wine shouldn't taste sweet. And, you know, the idea there being that there should be this kind of fluidity, you know, the sense in which, you know, there's this, you know, kind of elegance and synergy of whole. So the sweetness of the wine shouldn't, you know, be at odds with other flavors in the wine, you know, the sweetness should, you know, be well integrated enough that it's not jarring. And, you know, I think that is the case with all the wines in the mix today for us, you know, they do taste perceptibly sweet, but the sweetness is, you know, part of a whole, as opposed to a distraction there from.

Now, this notion of sweet wine, dessert wine, you know, it's a very nebulous style. You know, dessert wines are united under a common banner by their sweetness. And it should be said that, you know, there's something very primal about sugar in wine because, you know, sugar sensorily for us equals calories. But if you dip it for the Stefan, you know, before going crawling, but at the same time you're hardwired to seek it out. If you, you know, dab a bit of sugar water on the lips of an infant, they will smile. You know, fittingly, if you dab a little bit of bitters on the lips of an infant, you know, they will cry. You know? So we seek it out. It is very much a part of our genetic makeup.

Now, this sugar is a lifeblood of wine. Wine does not exist without sweetness. It is kind of the starting point for wine itself. Typically, in grapes, it comes in the form of sucrose. Sucrose being a disaccharide. In most wines, grapes as they themselves ripen on the vine. This sucrose is broken down into glucose and fructose. The yeast that converts sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide in wine consume mostly glucose. Most of the sugar left over at the end of fermentation is in the form of fructose; fittingly, fructose perceptually for us seems seemingly sweeter than glucose. So not all sugars are created equal in terms of how we perceive them sensorily. And that is why, you know, cynical soda makers use high fructose corn syrup as opposed to high glucose corn syrup because fructose is high fructose.

Fructose gives them more bang for their buck in terms of apparent sweetness in their sugary drinks. Now all wine, regardless of how seemingly dry has some leftover sugar in it. Even the most austerely dry brewed champagnes and reds have at least about one gram per liter worth of sugar left in the mix by the time that they are done fermenting. But most of the wines that we are dealing with for the sake of this lesson will have well in excess of that. Now we begin to, as human tasters, perceive sweetness in wine at about four grams per liter of residual sugar left over in our wines. That said, sugar does not exist in isolation. Sugar exists in this, you know, kind of very dynamic matrix. And sugar as such, you know, is sweet, obviously.

But if you add, you know, a little bit of sugar, you know, if you add acid to the mix, if you add alcohol to the mix, if you add grape tannin to the mix, our perception of sweetness changes. So, you raise the alcohol, the sugar is more jarring. You raise the tannin, it cancels out some of the sweetness. And most importantly, you raise the level of acidity, which can come from a variety of sources, chiefly in grapes from tartaric acid. You raise that tartaric acid and wines seem less sweet, which is why in dessert wines, one of the most important, important properties of the component, you know, ingredients is grapes that naturally hang on to sugar well as they ripen. They give balance to wine.

They create wines that are refreshing in spite of being exceedingly sweet. And, you know, that is a unifying element for the sake of all the wines that we are dealing with. They will be both high in sugar and high in acidity as well. Now, there are various means of creating a sweeter wine, various techniques. You can use, and we are going to cover, you know, pretty much all for the sake of the wines in our flights and the wines that were available by the bottle. I tried to design, you know, the lesson that way with assorted exemplars. So the first one we are going to start with is a case of fermentation interrupted. So, you have a Moscato d'Asti here that we are going to begin the lesson with.

And that comes from grapes that are harvested with a potential alcohol of, you know, over 10, 11, 12%. Typically, that is measured in bricks. It can be measured in all sorts of ways: oxalate, balm, glucose, fructose; if you want to get really scientific about it. But, you know, the notion here is that there is a portion of sugar in grapes that will yield a certain amount of alcohol if it is, you know, as fully fermented as yeast can accomplish. And for the sake of a good Moscato, you have a producer in Chidi Vaira. They, you know, kind of embody this classic. It is a classic story in the Piedmont of once the Barolo designation of origin was established. They started making wine under their own umbrella, even though the family had been growing grapes since the 20s.

They began doing so in the 70s. And most people that make Moscato in the region treat it cynically as a mass marketed endeavor. But for a long time, it was a local's wine. It was Farmer's Fizz. It was something, you know, wildly refreshing and fun to drink. And I'm going to pull up a map of the region here and feature Asti prominently, which is kind of cool because, you know, usually Barolo gets featured more prominently. But here it's a side-light. So Asti, you see smack dab in the middle, just kind of south and east of Torino. The Grape Moscato Bianco, the white there, somewhat of a misnomer. The grapes themselves actually look golden on the vine. It is the same as the Grape Moscato Bianco. It comes in many hues, many shapes and sizes.

Now, I should say that it is one of the most ancient grapes in the world, Moscato. You know, it doesn't have ancestors that, you know, we easily, you know, can source because it is so ancient. Its ancestors are lost to history at this point. And it has this heady perfume. It's hugely problematic to work with in the vineyard, in the vineyards, in the vineyards in Piedmont, it tends to favor more kind of limestone heavy soils. Ironically, most of the greatest vineyards for Moscato in the region are outside of Asti, not in Asti, although the DOCG with that name was endowed in 1993. Now, by law, it is a wine that is what the Italians call frizzante, which is to say lightly effervescent, as opposed to spumante, which would have a full champagne-like effervescence to it.

Now, Zoe, I'm going to kick it off to you for your tasting notes on this one. I should say that we are pairing this one with a mini vanilla tart. And, you know, I think for the sake of this dessert, it should be said that, you know, vanilla is one of those flavors that is perceptually sweet in and of itself. So, you know, we're talking about sweetness in wine. And, you know, there are empirically sweet, you know, sugars in wine that register as such on a palate. And then there are a set of flavors that register as perceptually sweet. You know, very often tasters will say, that ripeness in wine, a certain ripeness of the fruit in wine will give them a sensation of sweetness.

And that is because, evolutionarily, you know, that ripe set of flavors equal sweetness in our brains. Concurrently, oak sometimes, with its lactony vanilla presence, you know, that like brown butter note, registers as sweet for us for comparable reasons. But vanilla can be a little challenging to pair with. What I really love about, you know, this particular wine is it does that beautifully for the sake of the mini vanilla tart, which, incidentally, Annie, if you're listening, is absolutely delightful. Zoe, what are your tasting notes for the Moscato here? So I actually didn't try the Moscato. I'm so sorry to let you know. However, I adore the vanilla tart. And it was like, honestly, between that and the lemon bar, like, I couldn't decide which I loved more.

But I also felt like the vanilla tart was really instructive, in particular, to look at oak usage amongst all of the wines. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. So for me, I love this wine because there's a real purity to it. It has this wonderful, kind of like flowery, you know, quality in terms of the set of flavors and tastes, you know, like lilacs and all the purple flowers and, you know, honeysuckle. But it's got this great crunchy orchard fruit kick to it on the back end that's wildly refreshing and fun. It's one of those wines that, you know, is just super easy to like. I remember tasting this wine for the first time with the winemakers from GD Byra. And, you know, I tasted through all these dense, oaky, you know, kind of punishing Italian reds.

And we got to this, and it was just wonderful breath of fresh air. And it was one of those wines that just made me smile. It wasn't a wine that I was, you know, looking for. You know, I didn't say to myself, you know, I need to come out of this tasting with a great Moscato. It was one of those wines that just, you know, was a bit of a happy accident. Now, I'm going to go back to the wine. I want to concurrently celebrate the place that this particular wine has come to assume in hip-hop culture. I'm tasting a wine from GD Byra. But it should be equally said that none other than Nicki Minaj makes her own Moscato. And it is, you know, delicious in its own way.

And Moscato has taken off as a brand. And it should be said that, you know, the Cagnets, the Drakes of the world, whereas, once upon a time, they were celebrating Ace of Spades. Now they're name-dropping Moscato. And that just appeals to me because, you know, there's this, like, rare instance in wine culture where people are seeking out something that's, like, universally fun as opposed to beholden to this notion of prestige wine drinking. And I thought I would, you know, drop some rhymes for you guys and celebrate Moscato before we move on to our next beverage. So the first one comes from Little Kim. This is Lighters Up for those of you playing along at home. Little Kim was one of the first, you know, rappers of her generation to really jump on the Moscato bandwagon.

She says in Lighters Up, still over in Brazil sipping Moscato. You must have forgot, though. So I'mma take it back to the block, yo. Put you on to how we rock, yo. That is Little Kim. Next up, we got Thierry-Marie, Jay-Z, and Kanye. This is Make Her Feel Good. This is the remix, I believe. And they name drop a particular brand name here, which is very cool. So we do whatever Hypno-Crisp, though. I mean, whatever Sirocco Moscato, it does taste better. I know what them girls like. I know it ain't easy. I know it ain't easy every day. You will run into Yeezy. Yeezy, that one was a little harder. I apologize, guys. I'm gonna get better at this. Next up, we got Drake. I don't love Drake, it should be said.

But, you know, Drake really. You know, he sets the bar for his fellows. He's more number one singles than anybody else. He's a preposterously large house. Drake says that it's a celebration. Clap, clap, bravo. Lobster and shrimp in a glass of Moscato. For the girl who's a student and her friend who's a motto. Finish the whole box-hole. That is Drake, Do It Now. We're gonna close it out with a couple more. And I promise. I hope you enjoy it. I hope that you guys aren't signing off at this point. But I enjoyed this deep dive on the internet. Waka Flocka Frame won the other Waka Flocka Frame with Wale. DC Zone says, in no hands, girl, the way you moving got me in a trance. DJ, turn me up, ladies.

This is your jam, come on. I'm a sip Moscato and you're gonna lose those pants. He, for those of you playing along at home, just rhymed trance with pants. I don't know how I feel about that, but he makes it work. And then, lastly, this is Roscoe Dash. He had the courage to drop a verse and name the entire song Moscato. We'll go tomorrow. It's me, you, and this Moscato, oh, oh, oh, oh. Girl, you know that you're in trouble, oh, oh, oh, oh. It's me, you, and this Moscato, oh, oh, oh, oh. You get the idea. At any rate, that is Moscato. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh. I'll give you the them, you know, some common, uh, hip hop, uh, form.

Uh, I think, you know, again, at any time, uh, a wildly obscure Northern Italian dessert wine cracks a popular consciousness, uh, we should, uh, celebrate it. Um, all right, after that wild digression, uh, let's taste of Enson. Some toe, um, which is one of the great. Um, you know, kind of historic styles. styles of wine. So we're going to go straight to you for tasty notes on this one for the sake of the individual kind of offering. This goes with the hazelnut biscotti. We are not reinventing the wheel here. Hazelnut biscotti and Vinsanto is just like a cliche of sorts in the pairing world, but I think, you know, hopefully you get a sense why it is a cliche for the sake of this pairing.

So what are your tasty notes on the Vinsanto and the Vinsanto as it relates to the hazelnut biscotti? I thought that it was really tanky in the chat. Someone said that it ended with a really sour note, which I totally concur. It's definitely drier than the rest of the progression, and it's very savory. It kind of does taste like the hazelnut biscotti. And then the fact that it's aged in chestnut barrels. I know it's an associative property, but I get toasted chestnuts like you know, Christmas market abroad. I think it goes super well with the hazelnut biscotti. Your Christmas market abroad in Baltimore or other Christmas markets? I think in Germany, if we could like travel Germany, Austria, Belgium, somewhere around that little area. More of a European association, less of a Baltimore association.

Indeed, indeed. It should be said in the name of wine nerdery that chestnut was historically used quite a bit in Cooperage, particularly in Italy. Chestnut has whiter pores than oak. It's not as tightly grained as oak, so it invites more oxidation in its wines. And classically in Tuscany, you know, these wines were aged with a bit of headspace in the cask. So they encouraged oxidation in addition to aging in a more porous vessel. Now, Vinsanto means holy wine. It's thought that, you know, the name of the wine derives from a church practice of using it as the blood of Christ. It should be said this is, you know, maybe not the original Vinsanto. The name of the wine derives from a church practice of using it as the blood of Christ.

Inhabitants of Santorini proudly claim that theirs is the original Vinsanto. And in that sense, since the Santo there is a bit of a branding for Santorini. So they spell Vinsanto with the two conjoined. So Vinsanto without the space. This is Vinsanto with the space. And this is a dried grape wine from the great Malvasia. So Malvasia is kind of part of the same family as Muscat, highly aerated. It's a very aromatic varietal, historically very important in Tuscany, although, you know, replaced largely by red grapes. And, you know, you're going to hear this story quite a bit. These styles of sweet wines, these grapes that, you know, formerly were, you know, widely grown, the wines widely celebrated, but, you know, kind of are, you know, waning in popularity to this day.

But we're doing, you know, every bit we can to, you know, kind of work against that in our own right. This comes from a indirect, or a direct, property Castello di Papagiano. You can see this Castello on the label because, you know, when you can claim a Castello in the family, you, you know, market yourself around the Castello. You know, I have few rules in life, but, you know, I feel like if, you know, my family had a castle to claim, I would, you know, it'd be, like, on my T-shirt, you know, Castello. It's been in the family since 1150. And, you know, for me, I like about this wine because it tastes that, it tastes lovingly old-fashioned. So, it's a little drier, maybe.

Certainly than most Vin Santo's you'll find in Santorini and a lot of the Vin Santo's that you'll find in Tuscany, but that makes it all the more fitting as a pairing for something like the Hazelnut Biscotti, and again, we are up against this rule with, you know, dessert wine pairing that, you know, typically the thing you pair with, you want the wine to be as sweet as, but not glaringly sweeter than, so you kind of want to match sweetness, and often in these dishes, I find you want to match acidity as well, and, you know, there are a lot of people that will say that, you know, they don't love dessert wine with dessert. I say Baja. I say, you know, you know, I think, I don't agree with that.

I find that, you know, with a lot of desserts, with things that are sweet, you do need something in a wine that carries that same weight, otherwise it just doesn't register. Now, there are some wines, you know, in sherry, you know, that have other properties that are high. Glycerol, you know, that are fortified, you know, that can mimic that weight in other ways, you know, maybe they see a shit ton of new oak, or they're sufficiently old that they mimic that texture, but, you know, you need, you know, breadth in a wine for it to go with something sweet, otherwise it just kind of registers as flat, and, you know, it can be a good wine, but I don't think it's a good pairing. That's my two cents.

So we have you as a, you know, wine professional that's done quite a bit pairing yourself. Um, encountered, um, you know, either resistance or, you know, can you remember highly successful dry dessert wine pairings, um, that you have pulled off? Uh, no, but if I can embarrass Sarah Thompson for a hot minute, I still will never forget the cavatelli with octopus from Tail Up Goat, and she paired it with a Baltimore, um, rainwater, so it's super dry, super salty, super amazing, and because of, like, I think there was, like, olives in the dish, as well as, um, having that, like, just gorgeous, gorgeous, um, like, tomato base, it was wonderful. I think it's a great point, too, and just because you know these wines have a touch of sweetness to them, I don't think we should relegate them to dessert-only status when it comes to pairing, particularly something as dry as this, you know?

Um, this is a killer Pâté wine, it's a killer meat and cheese wine. I'd have it with steak, too, you know, and I think, like, Daniels can also play on that same level, but it's not as dry as this. Yeah, that's a killer point, Zoe. Um, absolutely, and, and, you know, so. Um, I think, you know, these are wines that will, uh, continue to pleasantly surprise, um, in terms of the way they go with, uh, various dishes. Um, I wanted to pull up a picture, so, you know, historically in, um, you know, this corner of the world, um, you know, you're drying the grapes after harvest, so, um, drying is a, a technique that dates back to antiquity, and it was a way to raise the sugar levels in the grape relative to the amount of liquid that was ultimately pressed from them.

Uh, these are drying racks, um, in Italy, um, classically used for both red wines, and, uh, and sweeter, um, you know, whites, like Arvinsanto here, um, you know, some of the most famous, uh, you know, kind of red wines from dried grapes being, you know, the Amaroni, um, and Rapasso family, uh, in northern Italy, so very much a technique that's used for a variety of different wines, and it should be said that, you know, some of the greatest wines of antiquity, uh, you know, a Falerian, for instance, um, was a, a dried grape wine, Comandaria from Cyprus was a dry grape wine and a sweet wine. So, you know, that extra sugar, you know, that extra potential alcohol that drying grapes allowed made the wines much more durable than they would have been otherwise.

And in an era without temperature control in the southern Mediterranean and a lot of places like Greece and southern Italy, you didn't have an alternative but to make sweeter dried grape wines as opposed to, you know, more elegant dry wines. You know, you kind of got forced into a box in an era without refrigeration, but people made the most of it. And, you know, these, you know, sweet wines were nonetheless among the greatest wines in the world. And Commandaria in particular won this very famous, you know, 13th century tasting of the world's greatest wines. It was kind of like prefiguring the judgment of Paris, you know, so many centuries later. But at any rate, you know, this dry grape style is embraced widely throughout Italy, it's embraced throughout Greece, it's embraced in France, and, you know, people use it, you know, in other corners of the world as well.

So it is, you know, one of the, you know, classic, you know, tropes and ways to both raise sweetness and boost the atmosphere. And, you know, it's also one of the, you know, one of the, you know, one of the, you know, alcohol potential alcohol content um in the wine um now next up we're going to move into another um means of doing so and that is you know what would be called cryo extraction um cryo extraction a a very fancy way uh to say that you're freezing something so instead of drying something um to remove water from the mix and concentrate a must you are freezing it to do so and you know the classic um image uh when it comes to uh cryo extraction is one of ice wine um and sadly we do not have an ice wine in the mix um ice wine is delicious we have uh you know served it previously at our restaurants uh ice wine uh comes from uh grapes that are um plucked from the very vines themselves frozen and typically um they are uh healthy so they're very um you know harvested very late um but uh they are not afflicted by um um but try to scenario um and uh you know they have to be actually uh frozen for um a period of much longer than just a day um they're harvested at night it has to be much cooler um than just 32 degrees there are all sorts of rules and regulations both in you know canada and in uh the continent where these wines are made and you know very often it's an all hands on deck thing where you call dozens of your friends and everybody harvests the grapes um in the Early hours of the morning, um, and then you enjoy a, uh, harvestman's lunch, um, or breakfast, uh, thereafter, a pride with you know local udb, um, or what have you, and it's a big old party, and you know very often in the old world this happens around Christmas, um, and it's just kind of a fun festival of sorts.

Now, uh, we do not have a, uh, grape ice fine in the mix instead we have an ice cider, which is like super fun preparing purposes ours comes from, uh, Eden Eleanor and Albert Legger, um, they're chemists, um, and uh, they took over a family farm in northeastern Vermont and wanted to make a commercial product, uh, realized that they couldn't. Um, you know necessarily, um, you know make a living just selling apples, uh. They went to Quebec, they tasted a product called Cedar Gloss, um, and they had this eureka moment, and they loved Cedar Gloss, and they said, 'Let's make this ourselves.' Now, uh, Cedar Gloss ice cider is made a little differently, uh, than um, ice wine, a little less romantic, um. So you know, you're harvesting tanks, you're not calling your friends to harvest tanks, um.

You're actually um, pressing the juice and then putting it in tanks outside, and the action of freezing and thawing over the course of a winter in a place like Vermont concentrates the must or concentrates The cider, uh, in this case and then, um, you know after that process of freezing and thawing, you come back to it the coming spring, um, and you ferment the concentrated juice but, um, that process of freezing and thawing is very gentle in terms of preserving the more delicate flavors, um, and fascinatingly enough, in my mind, it produces something in ice cider that's very high in malic acid, you know, which has that green apple twang and, concurrently, can be very high in sugar so, um, this one sits at 150 grams per liter of sugar which is, you know, higher than most sauterne, um, up there in Tokaji, you know, levels of sweetness so, preposterously.

Sweet, but seemingly you know super elegant and well-balanced, uh, most of you would have enjoyed this from my friends at Ancho that they happen to have on tap, uh, Zoe, uh, what do you love about this one and what do you like about it particularly in context with the lemon um bar um that uh it goes in the snack pack? Well, they're kind of playing the same game right so they're both lusciously sweet to start with and then the acid kicks in and it is so bright, it's like bottled sunshine and it finishes like whistle clean. I think that the viscosity coming in where it's like not cloying, it's still a little bit light, really helps that but You get like all of the denseness and it's so well concentrated and it's just so gorgeous and then the little bit of meringue from the fancy lemon bar with this was just like, yeah, they're both like uh, both the dessert and the wine get that like twangy thing that like registers in your in your ear, I know they're kind of like sharp in the same way and I find you know, both with dessert pairings and with you know regular food pairings that when you have something that is high acid you want to find a high acid wine to go along with uh, so do we have any comments um, you know from uh the folks joining us today either about my um capabilities as an mc or the dessert and food pairings that they are enjoying today you had a lot of encouragement on the mc oh thank you thank you uh we'll have to work on my mc handle um you know practice makes perfect that's all i'll say um i am a little jealous from those who are enjoying um these wines both with sweets from the snack pack but also cheeses um so like um and um who was having some delicious cheese with the um with a vin santo um but that seems like absolutely fantastic um i love the i love the ice cider with cheese um i think you know that raging acid really shines with like saltier um you know types of cheese um and you know as delicious as these wines are um you know with with sweeter items they're you know absolutely fabulous with with cheese um and you know it's kind of you know for me this is the same principle um you know sweet dishes perceptually you know have this weight cheese um has has weight uh for a different reason you just because it's very high fat but you know that richness um needs to find a dance partner um you know that is is similarly rich you know um you know they're you know you kind of need to match um you know that uh weight one against uh the other yeah absolutely um i also remember we paired this with um one of our like more savory Cheese courses, though, um, and it had like those Marcona almonds on top that were super salty which was wonderful, I think.

It was like the shaped Saint Malachi cheese if you remember that, oh yeah, oh that was a, that was a fun dish. Um, yeah, it just took and, I think, hugely underrated that idea of um making a cheese course out of just taking a vegetable peeler uh to the top of like a semi-making it rain like you're at the club um but you know with fromage um is absolutely, absolutely delicious um and you know it works really well with the raging acid um in in that particular wine um and you know if you get a chance to um seek Out of you know, either ice wine or cider, I just encourage you to do so. You know, there's like this purity uh to uh the wines.

There's actually a really uh relatively raging nerdy psalm debate about whether you age ice wine or ice cider. Um, people say you know it's one of those wines that um is all about freshness and that to the extent that you know you're aging you know, the one you're losing that and you're kind of debasing it. I just don't have enough experience with all that to make intelligent adjustments about it, but uh, um, you know, I love the fact that you know they taste like... I don't know, I don't know, I don't. Know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, and you know they taste like liquid hope you know, um, there's something

about them, it just tastes like, you know, the North Star, um, in liquid form, you know, it's like snow melt, um, you know, it's totally worth celebrating, um, great, uh, that brings us to, uh, the noble rock, uh, portion of our lesson and kind of circling back to the verse, um, that people were, uh, missing, uh, at the beginning of our lesson and, um, you know, as far as dessert wine goes, I think, you know, this is one of the most important, um, you know, dessert wine tropes that, you know, sommeliers love to return to, so, um, uh, these are, uh, grapes, this is Actually, Chenin Blanc, um, which we're not dealing with uh at the moment for the sake of our charter, but a really good example of botrytis syneria, Botrytis syneria, um, is a a form of rot; it's a mold, um, that afflicts uh grapes; um, it's not the only uh form of rot uh afflicting grapes but it is the most significant form of rot uh afflicting grapes, the most important.

And it comes in a couple different forms. There is what is called gray rot or sour rot, and then there is noble rot. So sadly, you know, as with most things in life, the worst form is more prevalent. Gray rot, sour rot is what happens in most vineyards when you have too much moisture. And depending on the grape, the grapes themselves either burst because they come to waterlogged or, you know, an insect, you know, takes a bite out of a grape and, you know, creates, you know, this, you know, opportunity for a spore like Botrytis to afflict an individual fruit or the whole bunch. And it happens to run amok. And if things stay too wet, then it kind of ruins the roost. And it starts to, you know, produce off flavors.

You get a set up. You get a set up. You get a set up. You get a set up. You get a set up. You get a set up. That enter the mix and essentially start to make vinegar on the vine. And you end up with grapes that you can't really do anything with. They're not even good for vinegar at that point. You know, you just throw them into the compost heap. Now, if conditions are ideal, then you end up with something, you know, more benign, more rare, and much more significant for the sake of our Sauternes. Now, what are these ideal conditions? So I think, you know, to understand Botrytis, it helps to understand, you know, Sauternes itself, because it is this hugely lauded source of Botrytis wines.

And you need to understand the particular geography of the place in order to understand, you know, the character actor that is Botrytis Scenaria in our drama. So we are in the Gironde Estuary. So you have Bordeaux here, one of the most famous winemaking regions in the world. You have two tributaries, the Dordogne and the Garonne. The Garonne stretches, they're both kind of flowing north at this point, going into the Médoc, it's called the Left Bank. The Dordogne, which flows from east to west, is in Liborgnet, in particular in the Côte d'Ivoire, called the Right Bank, even though it's kind of the top bank, if you're looking at a map, but they don't worry about that. So Entre-Deux-Mômes makes awesome wine, but we're not going to talk about it today.

Now, we're on the Garonne here, and more significantly than the Garonne itself is the Siron, the Siron. So this kind of like tributary of a tributary here. The Siron is kind of fed by these mountain springs, is a very cold tributary, and enters the Garonne, which is much warmer water. And in autumn, in the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, you get this fog that rests over the river in the mornings. But in favorable years, such as 2011, which happens to be the vintage on the Sauternes that you're enjoying, this early morning fog tends to burn off. So you get just enough moisture for our fungal friend Botrytis to afflict its, you know, fruit, but not enough for it to spoil the well. And that, therein, is the noble rot that we are looking for.

So it's this goldy loxy, just right set of conditions. And what the noble rot does ultimately, triples the grapes on the vine. So you get this concentration of flavors, and then this added layer of this musty Botrytis. So you can see here, you have grapes, in various shades of development, from green and underripe, to golden and more ripe. And this is Sémillon, actually, which is the major grape in Sauternes. The wine that we're drinking is 95% Sémillon and 5% Sauvignon Blanc. Savy B is there to liven things up a bit with acidity. Savy B, as always, the bon vivant in the party. It just wants to, you know, kind of be bright, and, you know, fun and flirty. Semillon is a little more unctuous.

So Semillon goes from this burnished golden to these various shades of, you know, I don't know, whatever the fuck you call that, umber, bronzed into this science experiment territory, this moldy peach territory. Dear God, what are you doing? Why would you eat this? But you know as we remembered in our bit of Versus Circle lesson, you know, there's this happy accident that happens when you press these grapes. And you get exceedingly low yields when you do so. So, famously, at Yaquem, Chateau Yaquem, classified in 1855 as the foremost growth in Sauternes, but by no means the only growth making great wine, you get a glass, like a gun rack, a glass per, you know, entire vine. You know, that's crazy low yields, cartoonishly low.

And that's because you're taking grapes like this, and typically your workers will go through the vineyard in multiple passes. In the case of the wine we're drinking, seven to eight passes, all harvested by hand. And the grapes tend not to ripen evenly for the sake of these individual wines. They, you know, and so it could be the case that, you know, in some instances, you're harvesting whole grape clusters that are properly afflicted by noble rot. But at other times, you know, you'll have, you know, very gifted pickers that will harvest, you know, half a grape cluster, at a time, if it's fully ripe, and leave the rest to properly ripen, you know, on the vine. And you're doing so kind of intermittently throughout the harvest.

So it could be that, you know, you, you know, make one pass at a particular interval, and then it rains, and you have to wait a couple weeks before you're, you know, able to do another pass. And this is a Botrytis on Riesling, and I just like the sense in which, you know, you have Cabernet, right? But, you know, just barely ripe grapes, you have, you know, Spätlese, so these are fully ripe, you know, golden, burnished Riesling, and then Alslese, which is a select berry harvest, and Baron Alslese, which is a Botrytis wine. And you get a sense of how on this individual cluster here, you have, you know, two sets of levels of ripeness, and that is not uncommon at all.

And that is why these wines, in particular, Sauternes, tend to be so ridiculously expensive, in addition to being sweet and having this kind of wildly musty sets of aromas. And what happens in these berries is you get that concentration of sugar, the fungus itself will actually consume some tartaric acid, so the wines themselves are actually lower in acidity, and they're higher in glycerol, so you get this perception of weight in the wines. And I, you know, this is actually my favorite pairing. Zoe, this goes with the custard. Do you have notes for us on this one? Yeah, absolutely. I think that the Sauternes is just, like, so beautiful with all those candied citrus notes. It also has, like, a little bit of a stone fruit, apricotty thing going on, but that feels more candied as well.

And then the Year of Oak, I think, comes in beautifully. Again, I think that the vanilla tart really amplifies that out. The custard kind of, like, works on the same notes, but I did enjoy how it worked out of the, or balanced the savoriness particularly because they were, they were, like, fresh almonds as well. And then I really enjoyed it with the hazelnut biscotti, because there's also so much butterscotch. And I think, like, it's cool to have that flexibility that you can go a little bit to the baking spice side and then still play with all of those, like, citrusy, lighter, lighter desserts. So it should be said that our producer of the club, Casually, is a mother-daughter team. The estate dates back to 1797.

They've been making wine since 2001, they're actually in so there's kind of a significant geographical divide here, depending on which side of the Céron you're on. And it should be said that the wines of Barsac, which has its own designation of origin, but can also call its wine Sauternes, which is much more, you know, widely known and much more marketable. The wines of Barsac tend to be lighter and brighter than the wines of Sauternes proper, which tend to be inkier and more dense and more unctuous. They're not inky, but more honeyed, as it were. And we're squarely in Barsac, so this is, as Sauternes goes, kind of like a fresher, you know, kind of riff. For me, it has this like key lime pie thing going on, which I think is super fun.

I, you know, I have a love-hate thing with Sauternes. I told Meredith, my wife, that we're doing dessert wine, and she immediately asked me if we were featuring Tokay, because Tokay is one of my great wine loves. Tokay is my favorite wine. Tokay is the original Botrytis Cineria afflicted wine. Sauternes really kind of came of age as a noble rot afflicted wine toward the tail end of the 18th century, just before T.J. got there, Thomas Jefferson, and then was celebrated as a noble rot wine in 1811, which was the Comet vintage, for those of you playing along at home, that's Healy's Comet, one of the most famous vintages of the century. And at that point, even in the early 19th century, they'd been making wine like this in Tokay in Hungary for about 200 years already.

Tokay was second only to Chianti, really, in establishing a designation of origin for its wines and is arguably the first region in the world to establish individual vineyard certifications. And it's also mentioned in the Hungarian National Anthem. And it comes largely from Hungary. It's mostly from a grape called Ferment, which, unlike Semillon, leans into this greasy thing like raging acid that I really dig. Semillon goes to this weightier, unctuous place that I don't always love, but I did absolutely adore it in context with this pairing, because you're dealing with an eggy custard, and eggs are this notorious sommelier bugaboo, and they create this perception of weight on the palate, which is often hard to pair with. But the Semillon, I think, just like the waxiness of it, you know, just is really fabulous.

With this dish, and, you know, of the, you know, sweet wine, you know, dessert offerings, pairing offerings that we had in the mix today, you know, in trying them myself and packing on the pounds, this was my favorite. Great. All right. So moving on to Banuels, which is another love. This comes from a style of wine that's called Bamboo Natura. So this is another way to make wine sweet. And it dates from Aftur. Our wine. Our Saracen friends introduced distillation to the continent. So after the 12th, 13th century, we start distilling, you know, our wines and making spirits. And we take the spirit and we start to add it to wine. And we add it to our wine before the wine has finished fermenting.

And it arrests fermentation at a point when there's still sugar in the mix. In this case, Banuels, it's made exactly like port, but a different set of grapes. In this case, you're dealing with the GSM Troika. And what I love about Banuels is it goes to this smoky kind of like, you know, brandy and cigars drawing room place that port doesn't go to. Port goes to this like raisined, you know, kind of California raisin, you know, place that can be really enjoyable too. And sometimes port, as it ages, will get smokier. But Banyuls, it has this more red fruit, you know, kind of resonance to it. More tobacco. You know, more herbal. And I really adore that. Traditionally, it was a very oxidative style of wine.

So very often it was aged in these glass jars that were laid out in the summer sun to bake. It should be said that we are in what's called Roussillon. So we're in southern France. We are abutting Spain here at the bottom of the map. These really beautiful, idyllic terraced vineyards in the shadow of the sea. It's one of those places that, you know, doesn't deserve to make wine as beautiful as it is. You know, they don't need another prestige project. You know, give, you know, I don't know, man, like Indiana. You know, somebody like Gary. Let's make great wine out of Gary. It's not beautiful in Gary. You know, they need something. But, you know, they are gilding the lily here. And it's just beautiful.

And they happen to make really delicious wine while the citizens of Indianapolis, you know, make do with whatever they're doing. I hope I haven't offended anyone from Indiana. At any rate, this comes from a smaller family producer, a style called Rimage, which is a style that is made in a less oxidized style. Honestly, it's made more like vintage port. This is 1993. I adore it. Zoe, hot takes. 1983? Yeah. 1993. I like the Banyuls. I thought it was, like, super flexible, just like the Vinsanto was. But because it's the most vineous, I feel like that is where it can truly play into a few other things that the Sauternes and the Eden in particular wouldn't be able to do so.

We paired the Banyuls with the triple chocolate and sour cherry cookie, which was super cool because that chocolate is just so intense and over just, like, so concentrated. And then that little bit of sea salt just really makes my palate salivate. And then the nice acidity and then, like, the really delicate tannins, but there's still a little bit of grip there I thought was really interesting on how they just go together. Yeah, I thought texturally this wine was really fascinating, especially with that cookie. So, chewy wine. And I don't think we always expect dessert wine to have any kind of tannic grip to this. But typically, and actually I didn't, you know, fully realize this until I was doing more research for class. But often they'll fortify these wines. Yeah.

While the, you know, grape skins are still in the mix. So, the wine itself is still macerating when they add spirit. And what that does is you get, you know, this leaching of tannins, you know, all sorts of, you know, these polyphenols into the resultant line at a higher alcohol level. So, you get more leaching of those tannins than you would if they waited to fortify. And, you know, the chewiness of this wine I thought was really great because that's a, it's a chewy, fudgy cookie. And, you know, I thought, you know, it was texturally, you know, kind of a really fun fit that way. And I like what you said earlier, Zoe, about this being a wine that you can kind of fuck around with, you know, for the sake of unexpected, you know, savory pairings as well.

And, you know, that weight, that grip being something that you could play against with, you know, something like steak even. And, you know, I think, again, if you're, you know, you're a wine lover, you know, you're a wine lover. And, you know, sitting at home and, you know, wondering what the hell to do with these wines. And, you know, you like them, but they feel, you know, like they're from a different era or whatever, you know, just have fun with them. And, you know, start to trot them out in unexpected places. You know, maybe it's not the only thing you're going to drink on the table. But if you're like me, you know, it's fun to have a couple glasses in the mix. Then you'll be pleasantly surprised by the strange bedfellows that you stumble upon.

Brent, any other, you know, thoughts from the masses for the sake of annuals? Yeah, I thought there was a shout out for it tastes like clove. And, you know, bad 19-year-old decision was smoking a clove cigarette. And there is definitely that going on. Oh, yeah. A little smoky too. I think that the spiciness is also part of why I would be more prone to pair this with something savory. Particularly like the steak with like Roquefort, like some like blue cheese. I think that would be a beautiful contrast there. That is another sommelier trope that we did not indulge. But that is a very classic. I had to. No, respect. It should be said too that I love the smell of clove cigarettes. I don't know why, but I hate the taste of them.

You know, as a. And the fiberglass is probably a deterrent. Yeah, that's definitely not a point in their favor. Question. Are the Sauternes or Bangles generally better if they're older or there are particular vintages that are good? And if you could speak to that a bit. So Sauternes in particular is hugely vintage dependent. So, you know, you have this very specific set of environmental conditions that give you botrytis. And it should be said too, that you know, these are wines that are about balance. So I'm going to pull up once again, you know, this, you know, flow chart of, you know, various levels of botrytis in our grapes. And in a wine like, you know, the Sauternes that we were drinking, it's not necessarily the case that the entire wine comes from the most shriveled set of grapes.

Because that would give you something that's kind of like impossibly unctuous. You know, and at these various estates, they employ people that are incredibly good at what they do in terms of, you know, making vineyard selections. And they will tell them to look for fruit that is, you know, slightly less desiccated if they need a little more freshness in their wine. Or more desiccated if they need more color. Or less concentration. And typically, you know, people talk about orange wine a lot, but typically in this context, they will macerate the skins with the juice for a long-ass time. For the sake of noble rot wines. Because the most interesting things in the wine, you know, come from that dry extract in the skins. So, you know, that's another thing that happens with a lot of these wines.

You know, 2011 was a hugely good vintage. And in a way that I didn't, you know, fully realize until I, you know, kind of dove further down the rabbit hole for this class. I don't drink a ton of Sauternes. You know, maybe I should be drinking more. I don't know. But at any rate, it was really the vintage of the decade. One of the best vintages of the generation. It was cooler during most of the growing season. But conditions were ideal for Botrytis during harvest. You know, so you have these different layers in these regions. So you have, you know, the growing conditions for the physiological development of brightness in the grapes. And then you have a separate set of conditions for Botrytis. At harvest. And you really need to, for the greatest wines, fulfill both.

So, you know, it's these multiple hoops that you're jumping, you know, through. And you could have great vintages that are great for different reasons. You know, maybe you have, you know, great, you know, physiological development of brightness in your fruit. But there's less of a Botrytis influence, you know, in one set of wine. And then, you know, maybe grapes that are a little less ripe. But, you know, it's a great Botrytis year. And, you know, the wine drinks differently because of that. So, you know, it's when people score vintages. They, you know. They run roughshod over that. But there's tremendous vintage variation in wine like Sauternes. It's arguably the most, you know, variant wine vintage by vintage, you know, in the world. So it's hugely significant.

And it's a wine that in some years, you know, quality-conscious châteaux won't even release. Because there's not enough Botrytis influence. And Botrytis is kind of a non-starter for the sake of making Sauternes. In Vouvray, it's less significant. In Port, it's less significant. That's not to say that there aren't great Port vintages. Or Vouvray vintages. There absolutely fucking are. There are some years that are just, you know, hugely exceptional. I just think because in both places, the climates are more Mediterranean. You see more consistency. And then you have this added layer of, you know, the hand of man for the sake of fortification. But those are equally, you know, wines that people, you know, look at scores for. You know, track Parker's chart for. Less so for Vanuels because nobody really drinks Vanuels.

But in Port, people are hugely obsessed with vintage, you know, readings. I think it's, you know, for me, the variation in vintages in Port is, you know, the highs and lows are a little, you know, there's like a more narrow band. Whereas in Sauternes, it's just like massive. But, you know, that's my take. I'm sure somebody from Port would disagree with me. So, what else do you got? Yeah. Could you talk a little bit more about pairing dessert with dessert wine and how the dessert wine should be a touch sweeter or at the same level as the dessert? And kind of how that is also tied into the physiology of wine because the way that we perceive sweetness is going to be different upon all of our palates and what our lifestyles are and our diets.

Yeah, so I think you have this starting point for this. So, you know, for the sake of sweetness, that is hugely variable depending on what you're used to. And it's usually variable depending on the cultural context. So, you know, winemakers in Europe will talk about releasing wines for the American slash Asian palate versus releasing wine for the continental European palate. And, you know, the US slash Asian palate is much sweeter. The continental palate is drier. And I'm not making these. These are market things that people do. This is not. You know, these are existing tropes. This is not, you know, my, you know, gross generalizations about, you know, the citizens of the Americas and the continent that is Asia versus the continent that is Europe. But at any rate, yeah, people approach it from different perspectives.

But I think once you do approach it and how you perceive sweet, you know, is consistent across wine and food. And for me, I think those wines. I think those rules are pretty ironclad. And for me, the rules are around the physiology of taste and weight that you perceive when it comes to food and wine. So, you know, a food dish that is sweet in a particular way will resonate with wine in a particular way. And if the wine doesn't match that level of sweetness very often, it just falls flat. Now, there are exceptions. But, you know, I encourage you. If you just have, like, a work-a-day Pinot Grige lying around to try it yourself. And then the other thing, too, is that, like, tannins and sweeter dishes, you know, tend to, you know, butt up one against the other.

And, you know, not create, you know, favorable, you know, love matches. You know, so there's a lot going on there. And a lot of it is highly subjective. But I do think more of it is scientifically ingrained than people commonly, you know, give dessert pairings credit for. I think dessert is a fun place to pair spirits. I hate, I don't really like cocktail pairings with savory, most savory dishes, unless you're dealing with, like, really low ABV cocktails. Because I think they, cocktails are kind of like self-contained meals. You know, I want to drink a cocktail as an aperitif. I don't want to, you know, maybe with bar nuts or something like that. But, like, I don't want to drink it as a pairing.

But it is a place with dessert where, because the dishes themselves have louder flavors and they're richer and weightier, you know, you can play around with. You know, certain spirits. And they will resonate and work. Especially since a lot of spirits, you know, are barrel-aged for a long-ass time. And, you know, that vanillin, you know, those, you know, that solitonin, those other, you know, kind of chemical signifiers that you get from long barrel aging are present, you know, in other ways. In terms of the flavor profiles of desserts. So, you know, that, like, wine should be sweet as the dessert thing. You know, I am in the context of parents. You know, hopefully, you know, one of the great lessons that you, you know, get out of the pairing classes that we've done is that you should try it and have fun with things and see what works for you.

But I will say it is one of those rules that, in my mind, has continued to bear out. And I continue to find that I want wines that are as sweet as the dessert. And, you know, I don't, there aren't a lot of other pairing tropes that I come back to the way I come back to that one. There's a really interesting comment about what about red wine and dark chocolate. Like, that's such a good thing. I mean, that'll work. I think that'll work sometimes. Again, though, I just think, you know, depending on the dry red wine, I, you know, personally, maybe that is a physiology thing. Maybe it's a personal thing. But I do, I want some sweetness out of the wine just to go with the sugar and the chocolate now.

And if you're going with something that's like Baker's Chocolate, you know, it's kind of gross to begin with. And, like, you know, I don't know what the fuck you pair with that. That's like a spirit pairing. You know, or maybe like a spicy mezcal pairing or something along those lines. But, yeah, I do think that, I know there are a lot of people that disagree with this and would say that, like, you know, a rich, unctuous dessert wine makes a great, or a rich, unctuous red wine, like, you know, makes a great pairing for desserts and, or chocolate desserts. And I don't agree. I don't agree. You know, I think you want something with. Now, that said, like Prisoner, you know, like one of the great, you know, like your red blends, they're fucking sweet.

So that actually doesn't contradict what I'm saying. Those are actually sweet wines that are billed as dry. So those work with dessert because they're actually dessert wines that are marketed as dry wines. You know, so that doesn't, for me, contradict the rule. You know, those wines, like Ménage à Trois, all that shit is actually sweet. You know, empirically, it is sweet. You know. And that's why they sell as well as they do. You know. So, yeah, they work with chocolate. But they work with chocolate because they're essentially dessert wines in the first place. But, you know, like Bordeaux or, like, yeah, that sounds gross to me. I don't want to eat that with chocolate. Yeah, I was about to say, like, just when you're, you know, when you're a baby son learning how to blind taste and you're still, like, trying to figure out if it's going to be old world or new world, something that I always think about is, like, could I just drink this after dinner on the couch watching a movie?

And it's, like, that's obviously going to be new world. That's obviously going to be, like, your California cab that does have a significant amount of R.S. to it. Yeah. They're so ripe and they're so abundant and opulent that, like, it is dessert wine. Yeah, totally. All right. So we got to get to Madeira here, though. And it should be said that Madeira deserves its own lesson. And, you know, we'll get there someday. I was very jealous. One of my Somme heroes, Paul Greco. Yeah. He did a whole, like, Madeira tasting with Madeira dating back to the, like, 19-teens for a select few. We didn't get there ourselves. Maybe we'll get there one day. But I love Madeira. Drink more Madeira. Madeira deserves its own lesson.

But we're going to give it, like, a solid five minutes here. Madeira means wood. It is an island in the center of the Atlantic off the coast of Africa colonized by the Portuguese. There were no inhabitants prior to the Portuguese discovery, although the island had been documented. Prior to that, by people who had seen it from afar. And one of the first things Portuguese did is burn down a good bit of the woods they found, plant grapes, and make wine. And it should be said that we are in a fairytale fucking landscape here for the sake of Madeira. You have these highly terraced vineyards. It is this volcanic mountainous terroir. Look at this. That is ridiculous. You know, that looks like a movie set. Those terraces are, like, a vine-wide.

There are no large holdings in Madeira. There are some producers. Enriquez y Enriquez has acquired some land. Blandy's has some land. But, like, you know, it is still dominated by growers who have a few rows here or there. It started out as a simple dry wine that people would send around the world. And then the, uh, Portuguese realized that they added spirit to the dry wine. It would preserve better. And then the really eureka moment was when the Portuguese sent these wines across the world. And they tasted the wine after it returned, after it had been used as ballast on the deck of ships. And they realized that the wine tasted better at the end of that transoceanic journey than it tasted at the beginning.

And the original Madeira, the most prestigious styles were called vinho de roda, which literally means 'wine that circumnavigated the globe'. The Portuguese devised a system. There are multiple ways to do this, essentially to mimic the aging on the deck of a ship. And there are a few different ways to do it. The modern shortcut is called the estuvagem process. Basically, it involves just heating the wine in the tank. The better way to do it is the Quintero method. Under the eaves of hot houses, under you know these tropical you know lodges And this Blandi's warehouse You know basically it is a sauna for wine And it creates this product that is like the Twinkie the cockroach of the wine world It's indestructible because you know all the things that you could do to a wine to kill it

Basically oxidizing and heating have already been done to Madeira And it's a minor miracle of a wine There are four noble grapes Madeira comes in many shapes and sizes from dry to sweet There's Surchel Verdello Boile and Malmsey We're drinking two Boiles one of which is named after G. Dubs, the American founding fathers. As much as we like to, you know, kind of celebrate them as these paragons of egalitarianism, they were unapologetic elitists. They drank their weight in shit that, you know, the average yeoman farmer could make. They did not afford, especially Jefferson, who was a huge hypocrite. But G. W. loved to entertain at Mount Vernon, loved nothing more than a glass of Bôla Madeira. Bôla is a grape that, you know, or a style, the grapes kind of become synonymous with styles in Madeira.

It tends to be spicier, richer. This is a blend of multiple vintages, it should be said, the G.Dubs. It's actually made by Barbetto, which is one of a handful of producers left on the island, although Manny Burke slaps his rare wine company label on it. Closart Gordon, the oldest independently owned house on the island. This is stupidly good. It's from 1989. My prerogative was number two hit on your charts. This wine is fabulous with the coffee caramel. It's long and lean and racy and lithe and, you know, you don't need it with food. It's perfect as such. Zoe, thoughts about the two Madeiras? Can I start with a question? How many houses are in Madeira? There are now like five left. There's another one that just started. Barbetto, Blandi's, Clossart Gordon, Delivera.

Who am I forgetting? Enrique C. Enriquez. And then there are a couple more. They all buy fruit, largely at the market in Cunchal. Yeah, it's like even more exclusive than Trappist beer. And it should be said that Madeira historically, you know, was one of the most popular wines in America. Our, or not our founding fathers, the like, well, the assholes that started this perverse experiment that is American democracy. Love to drink it. All of their crowning achievements at the time or all of their, you know, Hippocratic or hypocritical claims to, you know, universal suffrage, they toasted with Madeira. And, you know, it was, if you could afford it, the wine that you would put on your mantle and impress your, you know, Southern planter friends with.

Because, you know, you didn't have cellar space at the time. And, you know, if you tried to bring Burgundy over, it would probably be vinegar by the time it came here. So, and actually there's a decent amount of academic literature about the Madeira trade, which is kind of interesting in and of its own right. If you're, if you're nerdy enough. But yeah, just a, just a handful. I will say that, you know, so this, we sell it's, it's, they're, they're rare, they're rarer than they should be. But they're rare wines. I got four or five bottles of this. We sold it for two bills-ish. You know, proviso, you know, obviously I am first in line to get my head chopped off once, you know, the citizenry is in arms and they want to, you know, 86 the elites.

The sommelier is not a very pitiable figure. But I do think this $200 plus dollar wine is a good value. In and of its own right, because of the age that does have, because of the love that goes into making it. And because it's the kind of thing that you can have a glass of, stick it in the back of your liquor cabinet or, you know, you can stick it on a shelf, it'll be fine. You stick it in the fridge, it'll last longer. But you come back to it over the course of months or years, and it'll still be great because it's already, you know, evolved as such. You know, it is a, you know, not an everyday pleasure, but, you know, it is a pleasure worth indulging.

And I think, you know, the unit cost on it is very favorable, in spite of the fact that it is, you know, undeniably expensive. I thought that the 89 stood out with the coffee caramel, where I felt the coffee note was a little bit too overpowering with the GW blends. But what I'm so impressed by, both of them in particular, the '89 is how acidic it is and how that, like, just, again, lifts everything up at the end. And it's just so juicy and, you know, gorgeous. So that, yeah, that acid streak. So that's a defining feature of Madeira. That's something that separates it, in my mind, from other similar styles, port, in manuals, that, like, kiss of the sea. You know, it is actually very hard to properly ripen grapes because the climate is so maritime here.

So, you know, everything's harvested at, you know, 12% potential alcohol, still has raging acid, and it's fortified. So, you know, that acidic imprint is, yeah, it is just, you know, part and parcel of the style. And I think, you know, for those of us that love Madeira, is, you know, the defining trait that, you know, we, you know, hugely adore. And it's that, like, perfect thing, right? Where, like, you add something salty to something sweet, and then it becomes a little more sweet. And it just, like, pops that salvation there. And, like, the wine can do it. And so can, like, a little touch of, you know, a sea salt on a piece of caramel, for example. But how is climate change affecting all of the wine regions that we've tasted through?

And how does it affect Madeira in particular? It was a great question, Zoe. Let me close things out with a toast. And then I had the thought, another quote to share before we close things out. So I thank everyone today. To begin with, for tearing themselves away from the Hallmark Channel. I didn't realize it, but I was particularly excited when I shared the, you know, kind of initial image of the Lacey Chabert movie in our mailer. I hadn't read the movie description, and it's amazing. So this is a movie description for A Sweetest Christmas. A struggling pastry chef is thrilled to learn that she has made it to the finals of the American gingerbread competition, but distractions in her love life threaten to derail her dreams of taking home the grand prize until she rediscovers the spirit of Christmas.

You cannot, I want to be in the writer's room when one of these Hallmark movies is initially developed, because, you know, that is worth raising the last two in and of its own right, Zoe. But I wanted to close things out. Zoe, I wanted to thank you for joining us, officially off the payroll now, although I like to think that we're paying you in wine. Pleasure to have you all with us. And a couple teasers for you all at home and a shameless plea for help as well. So, teaser being, we have our final lesson of 2020 upcoming, and that is going to be a greatest hits compendium. I'm going to try out the MailChimp survey thing again, and I want to, you know, query this.

I want to get a sense of what your favorite bottles were over the course of our what will be 40 weeks of lessons so that we can try to bring those back for that lesson. And it can be favorite bottles in and of themselves or, you know, because of the, you know, hilarity that ensued when we presented them to you whatever Sunday it was. And then lastly, I am, you know, hoping to launch Tail Up Goat Wine School as a YouTube channel. Along with, you know, the Chocolate Rain Guy and assorted other YouTube personalities. I have no desire to revisit myself in recording form. So if any of you can help us out with that and converting those videos to and uploading them to YouTube, we are happy to pay you in wine.

So, YouTube uploads equal wine is the simple equation there. You know where to find us, wineschoolattailupgoat.com. Without further ado, I want to, you know, harken back to that, you know, original poem. You know, dessert wines, you know, they come from, you know, these extreme, you know, set of conditions. For the sake of grapes, they come from, you know, these unlikely, you know, source materials and these grapes that look like they've already rotted on the vine. But, you know, you get these happy accidents that occur. And we are in the midst of our own happy accident for the sake of pandemic. And this is one of the, you know, things that has come out of it. I'm eternally grateful for that.

Equally, you know, this is a season where, even in the best of circumstances, it's easy to be at your wit's end, easy to feel alone. I want to make sure that wherever you are enjoying dessert wine, it's a simple pleasure that you know that we are all alone together, enjoying it each in our own way. So cheers to you all. Salute. So on the subject of climate change, though, in, you know, each of these corners of the world, you know, you have a specific set of, you know, conditions that, you know, determine, you know, the quality of the wines. There's something fortuitous for the sake of dessert wine because you're already looking for, you know, maximal sugar.

You know, so whereas if you're making a, worried about making a dry wine and things got riper, then it'll kind of, you know, kind of spoil the party. You know, for the sake of dessert wine, it tends to be less of a problem. It becomes more of an issue in places like Sauternes, where if it gets wetter, you know, what was once noble rot quickly becomes gray rot. I don't think I've encountered much of that, honestly, in Sauternes as of yet. But if I was there, I would be worried about rain cycles changing in a way that made, you know, my once noble rot more ignoble. I don't know how they're dealing with it in Madeira, honestly. It's such a really, like, unique corner of the world.

And the climate is so oceanic, you know, that, you know, I have no idea. And they have the luxury there of going up, you know, so if it gets too hot or, you know, whatever, they can go up the mountainside. And then, you know, in places like Port, there is a fear that, you know, it gets too hot, it gets too dry, you know. But again, you can go up the river, you know, you can work with vineyards that formerly didn't ripen quite as well. So I don't want to call dessert wine, you know, a winner as such for the sake of, you know, global warming. But I think there are more mitigating circumstances. The real loser is ice wine.

So whereas formerly in places like the Mosel Valley in Germany, you know, you could regularly make ice wine, that is no longer the case. You know, the Canadians are managing it because they're Canadians. But, yeah, the ice wine tradition of making it, you know, that once was, you know, very prevalent is sadly languishing. What else do you have? Why is Barsak lighter? Why is it lighter than Saturn? Is it higher altitude? Actually, I think it has more to do with the soils. I think the soils are, no. I mean, there is like the altitude in Bordeaux is no altitude. Yeah, I mean, there's like a, there's a fucking plateau in Saint-Emilion and in Pomerol and they get really worked up about it. But like, yeah, it has more to do with how free draining the soils are.

So the soils in Barsak, I believe, are more free draining than they are in Sauternes where they're a little heavier. And it should be said that they're heavier in both places than they are in Graves, which is part of the reason that that corner of Bordeaux was self-selected for dessert wine to begin with. Where does the specific note of petrol come from? Like it's in perhaps Sauternes, but like we see it all the time in Rieslings. So in Riesling, there's a chemical signifier called TDN, actually, that tends to develop, you know, that we register as petrol that tends to develop, particularly in warmer vintages. And I get it a lot of times from wines that are raised on volcanic soil, from black soil, tends to radiate heat a lot.

And it also tends to develop in Rieslings as they age, Rieslings from warm vintages as they age. I don't know. So that is a chemical basis. Sauternes couldn't be any less volcanic in terms of its point of origin. And so, yeah. Semillon couldn't be any more different as white grape from Riesling. Well, people compare it to Riesling, but I don't know that it's the greatest comparison, especially at the ripeness levels they get in Sauternes. I think it has more to do with age than anything else. And I think it also has to do with the glycerol thing. So glycerol is alcohol sugar. And we don't register it as sweet as glucose, fructose, et cetera. But it gives us, you know, kind of suggestion of weight.

And then there's this added thing that happens in dessert wine as it ages, where the primary fruit aromas start to die off. And we get this perception of beeswax. And it's also said that dessert wines will start to eat sugar, which empirically doesn't happen because the wines stay at the same level empirically of grams per liter of sugar. But the perception of brightness in the fruit falls by the wayside. And, you know, in terms of the way our body reacts, our brains, you know, really kind of all this stuff is happening unconsciously in really fascinating ways. But in terms of the way, you know, our refractory bulb that we, you know, kind of compile that picture of a wine, because those fresher fruit riper aromas aren't as readily available as the wine ages, the end product feels less sweet to us psychologically in a really fascinating way.

It's a really interesting wine mystery. But, you know, yeah, I think it just, and then botrytis for me always registers petrally. It has that like huitlacoche, like Mexican food thing happening. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's greasy, it's unctuous, it's, it's like, un-fresh, you know, in a way that I enjoy. But, you know, I'm the guy that wants to try the Moby Peach. So, you know, appeals to that demographic. Yeah, particularly something as loud as petrol. Like, I feel like you're a little kid who, like, likes the smell of it, or you don't. And it's very visceral, and it's very dramatic. Yeah, and I think dessert, dessert wines are like that. You know, I think they inspire that level of devotion. You know, they're, they're ambrosial.

They're, you know, yeah, there's something mythical and, you know, substantive and, you know, self, I mean, not self-important, but, you know, they belong to eternity in this really awesome way. Absolutely. And I don't think I have any more questions, actually. All right, great. Zoe, do you, or, sorry, I forget your dog's name. What's her? Penny. Zoe? Penny. Penny. Does Penny have any, any closing thoughts for us? I don't think so. She's not old enough to drink. She'll be 13 next week, though, so. She's definitely old enough in dog years, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not sure what 13 in dog years is. Well, you don't look a day over 12 to me, Penny. Get it, girl. I hope you all have a lovely week. Thank you so much for, you know, drinking all the sweet wine, doing all the sweet things with us today. Zoe, enjoy the rest of your night in Baltimore. Cheers. Bye, everyone.