How to Find the Right Wine and Dessert Pairing

Just like when picking between red wine, rosé or white wine for your main course, you also need to give some thought to pick out the right one for your dessert. The variety of flavours in this course gives us a wide range of possibilities to have different pairings with wine.  

The most important thing to take into consideration is what you will be having for dessert, (creamy desserts, more compact dry desserts, sweet desserts, cheese boards, etc.), and the amount of sugar in it. As a rule of thumb, the wine should be just as sweet as or a little sweeter than the dessert itself. Let’s take a look at all the options! 

Let’s start with one of the most popular kinds of elaborate desserts: chocolate ones. Everyone likes something to sweeten up their lives. However, chocolate is one of the foods that, depending on how sweet it is, would go better with one kind of wine or another.  

Here, the rule to follow is quite simple. The whiter the chocolate, in other words, the less cocoa and the more sugar, the more we should go for white wines such as sweet wines or semi-sweet wines. In terms of intense chocolate desserts, their bitterness goes perfectly with a Tempranillo wine, such as Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot. We just love pairing dark chocolate or coffee desserts with a glass of Coto Real Reserva. 

For fruit compotes or tarts, we can opt for aged wines such as the Coto Crianza or the Grenache variety of it.  

When it comes to fruit, the secret is also in finding the right level of sweetness for the dessert. For fruits with a citrus kick, the best option is to go for sparkling or refreshing white wines, such as a Verdejo. This is a great option for fruit salads, for example. For sweeter fruit salads, it’s better to go for smoother and fruitier wines.  

This is where semi-sweet comes back into play. Our Coto Semidulce is perfect for pairing with creamy desserts and mousses, since its hint of pineapple and citrus (which come from the Chardonnay grape) will be the perfect match for a light and refreshing dessert.  

And what about cheese? Cheese is also a part of the dessert course! It’s not uncommon to order a cheeseboard or a cheesecake to finish off a meal. 

Although there are just so many cheeses in the world, when eating them to finish a meal (when they tend to be softer, such as a ricotta or a tetilla cheese), we also recommend pairing with sweeter wines (such as a semi-sweet), but not an overpowering once, since cheese can really fill you up. 

These are more typical desserts in the colder months or big celebrations such as Christmas In general, they tend to be drier and more compact, and many of them are made with nuts. How can we pair these desserts?  

Traditionally, they normally go with sweet wines, but we recommend going for a semi-sweet, since it will give just the right amount of sweetness, but without losing its fresh edge.

No, your eyes don’t deceive you. You can pair wine and ice cream. It’s just the same as with any dessert. Depending on the variety, it will go better with a certain kind of wine. Rest assured; they make for a great combination! 

In this article, we give you an in-depth look into all the options out there and some tips for pairing wine and ice cream.  

Don't forget to take a look at our content to learn how to pair wine and which different kinds of pairing you can do. Your pairings will always be a hit.