Dessert Wine

A strong favourite of the MoM camp (when we're feeling flush) - good dessert wine has very little else to compare to. The character lent to most of the world's best dessert wines is as a result of a truly gruesome process - that of Botrytisation (the action of the mould Botritis Cineria) on the grapes. This cheeky little mould descends on the grapes, forms on their skins, and then over the course of a few weeks, gradually extracts a good proportion of the moisture from the grapes. This means that when the wine is pressed, the juice has a very high concentration of sugar, which effectively halts the fermentation before it's complete (Yeast is remarkably picky, and doesn't like things that are overly sweet, acidic, or alcoholic). The resulting flavour is something that we truly believe you've not lived until you've tried.