Sweet Wine Pairings?

I

Ian Fitzsimmons

Ian Fitzsimmons
My wife and I hardly ever drink sweet wines (demi-secs/halb-trockens don't count), but I have a small pile of Barsac I bought back when I was young and stupid. They are beginning to molder.

What kinds of half-way normal foods can these wines reasonably be enjoyed with? Fois gras is excluded from the category of normal food, by the way.

I wonder how they would do with pizza?
 
Ian -- There are very few truly great wine/food combinations, IMO, but Barsac/Sauternes and blue cheese is one of the most sublime. Once with a tasting group where we routinely finished the wines after tasting with cheese, I did a selection of blue cheeses to go with the Sauternes. Now that was fun!

Apple, pear, quince, and almod tarts are also great combinations.

Don't feel pressured to drink the wines, though -- they will outlive you.
 
as one who has attended many all-sauternes/barsac dinners in my recent lifetime, I can assure you, they work better with courses other than cheese or dessert than you might expect.

tell me what you've got, I'll make specific suggestions.
 
blue cheeses
roasted nuts
any pate (though, the richer the better)
grapes!

The gist is: either contrast the richness of the wine by having a food with some acidity or align with the richness by serving oily/fatty food.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

... The gist is: either contrast the richness of the wine by having a food with some acidity or align with the richness by serving oily/fatty food.
Click to expand...

This is what made me think of pizza - which, as Sharon points out, otherwise would be rather counterintuitive. Joel's idea sounds feasible; after all, there are only so many times a year you can eat a plate of gorgonzola (or Stilton) by itself, even with decent wine.

We have the Doiseys, some of each, and I'm less confident than Claude that these guys will keep on keeping on. Maureen's desert ideas are welcome - merci.
 
Fig, prosciutto, & blue cheese pizza -- perhaps leaving out the customary caramelized onions, perhaps not -- if you're really in the mood for pizza.

Five-spiced tenderloin (not grilled) with caramelized apples and a sauce that incorporates honey.
 
We had a White Bordeaux/Sauternes producer in our office last week and he suggested Sauternes with fried oysters was an excellent match and that you could do it with white meats such as pork and veal. Come to think of it, I bet Sauternes with the pork with prunes and apricot dish Sharon made a couple of months ago would work well.
 
Brad's post also puts me in mind of pork belly. Crisped, with the right spices and the fat still melting within...
 
Not quite enough acidity in Sauternes for pork belly*, although if he has Daene that might be better. I would use the Vedrines for cooking. Unless you've found some Dubroca...

The idea of fried shellfish is appealing as well - fried oysters, mildly acidulated, between two slices of brioche.

*I much prefer Alsatian sweets for pork belly if one has to go the sweet wine-pork belly route...
 
It's true that, in general, I don't have a whole lot of use for fat wines in general...especially white, especially white and sweet, and especially white, sweet, and oaked. Like you, I'd prefer something Alsatian. But I still think the pairing would work, despite the lack of acidity (as long as one keeps it out of the pork dish as well).

It's not like I'm going to test the theory, though. I own exactly one bottle of Sauternes, and it's not going to be served with pork of any kind.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
The 19th C fashion was to serve them as an aperitif. Or you might say cocktail.
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Or maybe not. I've read this, too, and for a while I thought the coolest thing would be to serve a dinner featuring Barsac with appetizer, main course, and desert, showcasing versatility in a wine not generally cited for this quality. On reflection, this sounded monotonous, but I still like the idea of serving a sweetie as an aperitif/appetizer pairing, then bringing it back, Banquo-like, for a fruit-custard desert. Since I have 750s (don't ask me why), I suppose I should try this with a small dinner party.

Thor, notwithstanding my huge respect for your straw dinosaur comic strip, the idea of Barsac/Sauternes and pork anywhere in the vicinity of honey makes my gorge rise. It calls to mind those nightmarish, Hieronymus Bosch-evoking Roman concoctions, featuring jellied giraffes' hooves and the like.

Now, a bit of crackling with gorgonzola and pine nuts, strewn over thin focaccia and lightly broiled ... hmmm.
 
OK, fair enough. As I said, I'm not going to be trying it either. For one thing, I prefer my sweet wines to be less Rychlewski-approved.

(Yes, that's Coad-bait.)
 
As an off-event at Vinexpo '03, Sapros sponsored a dinner cooked by Henri Gagneaux to accompany the botrytised wines of Sapros. Those who attended were quite impressed with the results. I'll try to dig up the menu when I'm not so jet lagged.

Mark Lipton

AIE:
Escalope de canard la poudre dorange et jambon de Parme (from Gagneaux)
Nems de porc aux pices (ditto)
Gele de Saint-Jacques la cardamome (ditto)

[Excluding the several dishes made from foie gras]
 
Dip a smallish biscotti in the Barsac, get half of the biscotti nice and soaked and leave the other half untouched. Then eat the entire biscotti at once.

Repeat.

The textural contrasts are nice.

Put raisins in the biscotti for best results.
 
curiosity got the better of me when i remembered that a wine shop nearby had a '99 on the shelves for $17

"pizza" was nan bread toasted then lightly brushed with a sauce made of sliced almonds and pulverized dried shiitake mushrooms sauteed in butter. small blue cheese chunks were patted on next, then topped with a slice or two of prosciutto and broiled quickly.

pumpkin soup made with a robust chicken broth/miso combo base

the wine worked just fine with everything...no clashes at all....in fact even the salad worked.
 
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