I had wanted to pick a dessert wine to go with blueberry pie. After a few suggestions, I decided to taste two very different dessert wines side-by-side; first, by themselves, and second, with the dessert. I had a couple of friends who were willing to play along.
The wines were:
–2007 Braida Brachetto d’Acqui (Piedmont, Italy), and
–2006 King Estate Pinot Gris Vin Glace (Oregon, USA).
So first we poured the wines and tasted them side-by-side. The Brachetto is a slightly frizzante dessert wine, with lots of raspberry, strawberry, and cranberry notes throughout. It’s very low alcohol–5.5% per the label–and relatively high acidity compared to the fruit. Between the acidity and the tannins, it doesn’t initially come across as a “traditional” dessert wine. I liked it immediately; my friends took a while to enjoy it.
The King Estate Pinot Gris, by contrast, immediately comes across as a dessert wine. Lots of honey and apricot throughout, with a moderately viscous midpalate (10.5% alcohol). The fruit and sugar somewhat dominate the acidity, so that it might seem a touch cloying to some people. It’s really almost a dessert by itself, and my friends preferred it to the Brachetto in terms of drinking by itself.
Once we served the blueberry pie, however, I think everyone’s views changed drastically. The raspberry/strawberry flavors in the Brachetto were much more complimentary to the blueberry pie (which I expected). One thing I didn’t anticipate, though, is that the tannins in the blueberries somewhat tamed the sharpness of the Brachetto–the wine seemed smoother and rounder with the pie.
By contrast, the King Estate Pinot Gris didn’t really match the pie at all. In fact, if you took a bite of the pie, and then a taste of the wine, it was almost as if the wine cleared the palate of the taste of the dessert.
Overall, the King Estate Pinot Gris was preferred by my friends by itself, but the Brachetto was clearly better with the blueberry pie. Because of the strong raspberry elements, the Brachetto would also be an excellent foil to a rich, chocolate dessert. The Pinot Gris probably would have been better with a peach pie or a tart tartin.
Bruce