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Italy’s best sweet wines
Italy offers a wide variety of red, white and semi-sparkling sweet wines. Its passito wines are famous and distributed across the whole of Italy, and each area has its own characteristics: from the passito wines from Pantelleria in Sicily, to the intense Valpolicella from Veneto, or the traditional Vin Santo from Tuscany and other regions. In Piedmont, it is hard to resist the seductive Moscato d'Asti sweet wines with a light perlage and sophisticated sweetness, or the vibrant Asti Spumante– sweet semi-sparkling white wines that contrast with the region’s equally enticing sweet reds. At Signorvino, you can find the best selection of Italian sweet wines to enjoy with desserts, romantic dinners, aperitifs with friends, or purely for pleasure.
Major designations in sweet wine
Northern Italy offers a number of high-quality sweet wines and major designations. In Piedmont, we can enjoy Moscato d'Asti, with a light and semi-sparkling perlage, perfect for cracking open on special occasions. These sweet white wines are made from Moscato grapes cultivated in vineyards in the Asti municipality, which are in the highest production category in Italy, the DOCG. While in the south, in Sicily for example, we have fine sweet wines like the renowned Marsala – topaz in colour with a fruity, full-bodied flavour. Marsala is a sweet liqueur wine with the Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) designation.
Sweet wine production
Sweet wines can be classified as three main types. Firstly, there are the Italian natural sweet wines , which are made from grapes from aromatic varieties like Moscato, whereby fermentation increases the sweet, sugary taste. Then, we have the late-harvest sweet wines, which maintain a high concentration of sugars that covers the acidic part of the product. Finally, the dessert wines, on the other hand, are made with grapes left to dry after harvesting, which increases the amount of sugar in the grapes.
Pairings with sweet wine
To create a good pairing between the food and wine in question, it is important to take into account the characteristics and flavour of both. Not every white dessert wine goes perfectly with every meal or dessert. Despites its sweet nature, this type of wine can have different intensities. If we want to pair a meal with a very sweet wine, to balance the flavour the food must not be too sweet because it could kill the wine’s flavour, aroma and taste in the mouth. Therefore, the sweetest wines can be paired with strong cheeses, foie gras, walnuts and grapes, or fresh fruit. Red dessert wines work very well with products that contain cocoa (like chocolate), or coffee.