Dessert Wine Pairings With Port and Moscato

Dessert wine represents winemaking at its most magical—concentrated sweetness balanced by acidity, flavors of honey and dried fruit, wines that can age for decades. Here is how to end a meal on a high note.

Understanding Dessert Wine Sweetness

The cardinal rule: your wine must be at least as sweet as your dessert. A bone-dry Champagne with chocolate cake is miserable. But match that cake with a lusciously sweet Banyuls, and suddenly both shine.

Sweetness levels in dessert wine range from off-dry (German Spätlese) to intensely sweet (Pedro Ximénez sherry). Know your dessert’s sweetness and match accordingly.

Port: The Chocolate Solution

Chocolate notoriously challenges wine. Its bitterness, fat, and sweetness create a minefield. Port navigates it brilliantly.

Ruby Port with its fresh berry notes pairs with dark chocolate truffles and chocolate lava cake. Its youthful fruitiness echoes chocolate’s richness.

Tawny Port with its nutty, caramel notes prefers desserts with those same flavors—pecan pie, crème brûlée, dulce de leche, or just a wedge of aged cheese.

Vintage Port is contemplative, meant for sipping alone or with a fine cigar and maybe a few walnuts. Its complexity deserves full attention.

Moscato: Light and Lovely

Moscato d’Asti from Italy is barely alcoholic (around 5.5%), gently sparkling, and irresistibly fresh. It is not trying to be profound—it is trying to be delicious.

Pair it with fresh fruit, light pastries, or fruit tarts. Its gentle sweetness and peachy-floral aromatics make it a palate cleanser as much as a dessert wine. It is also fantastic with brunch.

Sauternes: The Golden Standard

Sauternes and its siblings (Barsac, Loupiac, Cadillac) represent dessert wine at its most majestic. Made from grapes affected by noble rot, these wines offer layers of honey, apricot, vanilla, and spice.

The classic pairing is foie gras as a first course, but Sauternes also loves fruit desserts (especially those with stone fruit), crème brûlée, and blue cheese. Roquefort with Sauternes is one of the world’s great pairings.

Riesling: The Versatile Sweet Wine

Late-harvest Riesling from Germany, Alsace, or Austria offers sweetness balanced by electric acidity. This makes it extraordinarily food-friendly for a dessert wine.

Try it with apple desserts, Asian-influenced sweets, anything with ginger, or cream-based desserts. The acidity keeps everything lively.

The Cheese-Course Alternative

Many meals end better with cheese than dessert. A cheese course lets you finish the dinner wine without needing a special sweet bottle. Blue cheese works with Sauternes or Port. Hard aged cheeses love a tawny. Fresh goat cheese with honey needs just a drizzle of its own.

The cheese course is wine’s get-out-of-dessert-free card—and often more satisfying than a sweet ending anyway.

Complete Your Meal

More pairing guides: Appetizer Wines | Cheese Pairings | Sparkling Wines. Planning a dinner? See our Wine Dinner Party Guide.