Palate cleansing between dessert wines at tasting

I apologize if this subject has been covered, but as the title indicates, I’m curious as to what your thoughts are on proper palate cleansing between courses of dessert wines. My concern is that most dessert wines are rather intense and some can be even syrupy. Will crackers and water get the job done? Of course the plan is to arrange the flight from least to most robust flavors, but what else can be done? As an example the flight will include Sauternes, Cab Franc Icewine, Orange Muscat, Tawney Port, Sherry, and fortified Cappellano Barolo Chinato (listed here in no particular order). Some of these are “stick to your ribs” flavorful. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers.

Wow - that could be quite a challenge to the taste buds. Sweet/fortified wines are often a real treat, but palate fatigue can set in much quicker that reds or whites.

Barolo Chinato is ‘love it or hate it’. As can certain sherries.

If your catering could stretch to it, a delicate mignon to match per wine might be the best idea.

I recall someone doing a dessert wine tasting many years ago, where plain doughnuts / sticky buns were supplied. It worked to a degree from what he said, but that the whole experience was quite challenging.

I’d be tempted to serve the Tawny and Barolo Chinato alongside an espresso (or at least the Chinato)

My gut feel for order is (but sherry to slot in somewhere depending on the style), plus some ideas for a simple small pairing.
Orange muscat + muscat grapes (or another decent table grape)
Sauternes + a delicate blue cheese e.g. Montagnolo/Combozolo or sliced peach
Cab Franc Icewine (though it may struggle anywhere in this lineup) + (don’t know - strawbs?)
Tawny + toasted nuts?
Barolo Chinato + coffee

Scottish Butter Cookies?

The fat could counteract the high acidity of some of those and the flavor is fairly neutral…


PS: the Chinato has GOT to be served last.

Well, I guess spraying your mouth with Lysol is out…

How about Oreos? I like Oreos! Ham, tawny port and Oreos actually sounds good.


(Edited because autocorrect got me on “ham”)

Thanks for the input. Yeah, I knew from the start this was going to be a challenge for the group (possibly 20-24), but I am usually not one to shy from it. I agree the chinato is at the end due to its medicinal spice profile (personally, I love it, but then I used to fake sick to get cough syrup as a kid…) And I was planning on cheeses and desserts to pair with each. I like the coffee suggestion, maybe a high quality bean for french press??? I’ll hope for the best, and report back after the 19th…

roast beef.

seriously.

[cheers.gif]

A similar story to me, as I used to take my sister’s cough medicine for her and we both felt better for that arrangement!

I’d probably go dark roast and black, but leave some milk out for people to use as required. I tend to like Macchiato myself, with the splash of frothy milk not taking too much of an edge off the coffee.

A light crisp beer. Seriously. It resets the palate amazingly well and I/we drink a lot when doing large Port tastings. Otherwise saltine crackers and water also works pretty good.

You know you could go with sausage or some kind of ham - speck or something along those lines, and some salted nuts, maybe with some truffle salt.

You’re also mixing really syrupy wines with more balanced wines and with fortified wines. Normally you’d go sweet to sweeter, but for me, the fortified wines come across as extremely clumsy in comparison to some of the others.

The orange Muscat and sherry for example, can be slightly sweet or really sweet, depending on what you happen to be pouring. Is the sherry Moscatel or PX? Or is it a moderately sweetened oloroso? If it’s a PX, I’d put that even after the Tawny because it’s so syrupy and cloying. But if it’s a Moscatel or not sweet PX, then it could come before.

I agree with this. Prune in NYC serves their bloody marys with a shot of Red Stripe as a palate cleanser and it works quite well. I can’t see why the same logic couldn’t apply to sweet versus spicy.

great advice! The sherry is, in fact, PX, so I do have it as the next to last, mostly due to the super sweetness factor, and I’ll be ending with the coffee and the Cappellano because its…well…“different”. I also like the suggestion to cleans with beer. I was planning on serving salad and shepherds pie before the tasting, so I’ll likely have a few beers available for those that don’t want wine (zin) anyway. Ill just have to be sure to have some bud light available. [barf1.gif]

I’ve been to many all-sauternes dinners, and I’ve found that up to 10 wines is fine with food. I tend to like sweet wines with food anyway, and it definitely helps cut through the richness well. If you’re not going to have food, then I agree with having a light sparkling beverage. (I don’t drink beer, but I’ve used sparkling water. I suppose a champagne might work as well?)

I agree that generally you want to from the lightest bodied to the heaviest bodied wines in that order if they are all going to be sweet. Order should be Orange Muscat which I presume to be Quady’s, Cab Franc Icewine, Sauterne, Tawny Port, Sherry and lastly the Barolo Chinato. Props to you for getting that last one two, I’d kill to get some here in Ontario.

In regards to palate cleansing, there’s only two things that will work – and the better of the two is clean clear slightly chilled water. This is true of all wine, sweet or not. It rinses out the palate without adding anything of its own.

Now drinking all that liquid without food is no good for the appetite which brings us to our second best choice – food. Normally, I would say the saltier the better. Crackers, cheeses, charcuterie, olives, sardines, canapes, finger sandwiches, charcuterie, whatever you fancy. As long as it’s directly opposite the many sweet flavors. Serving more sugar with a large group of sweet wines is enough to turn some people off of sweet wine forever.

HOWEVER… you plan on serving salad and shepherd’s pie beforehand, which implies the sweet wines are actually meant as a dessert treat. In this case, by all means feel free to serve some desserts and invite your guests to treat the entire display -sweets and sweet wines – as one big dessert buffet. However, you may want to throw in some fresh fruit and cheeses as well for some contrast.

I would also suggest serving some of the dessert wines with the salad and shepherd’s pie as well so your guests can see what a great contrast that would make. You’d be surprised how well that orange muscat goes with the salad and the Sauternes and Port with the shepherd’s pie. That is of course strictly optional.

I think saltine crackers and water works pretty good.

I would want something salty. I think a few of the suggestions of salty foods would work great.

You are going to think I am crazy, but…

Captain Crunch.

With Crunch Berries.

It will standardize your palate between tastes to give you a dependable reference.

I will leave the controversy regarding the different flavors of the different color Crunch Berries to others to argue.

I believe that neutral crackers like Carr’s Water Crackers work best along with water. But also very good between dessert wines is a plain (un-seasoned) baguette as fresh as possible, along with water. Flavored drinks or foods don’t work well, can provide false impressions with acidity, tannins, and even textures … so I am a minimalist when it comes to what I’ll eat/drink with any wine, no less dessert wines.

Can’t believe I didn’t mention plain mozzarella cheese. Very light flavor and just a bit of salt.

If you are doing that type of cheese with a casual wine experience, then it is great.

If doing an analytical type of tasting, then the texture and tannins will definitely be altered by the cheese. Whether you will be able to perceive this difference depends on how long into the tasting you wait to eat it.

Lightly (and light mineral-wise) sparkling water is perfect. Badoit, Hildon or Apollinaris. Perrier and San Pelligino etc are too energetic and minerally.

I will also second Paul’s roast beef suggestion. As crazy as it sounds, a cold, unspiced (other than salt) piece of roast beef totally clears the palate.