Muscat, also know as muscatel or moscatel, is a varietal that is produced in many of the major wine growing regions around the world. In Italy the varietal is know as Moscato, and can be produced in either a still or sparkling (frizzante) style. Moscato is used predominantly to make sweet dessert wines that can be crafted to compliment dolci (sweets) or served as dessert itself, or as a milder alternative to other after-dinner liqueurs. In many cases the wine is fortified with additional levels of alcohol to enhance the wine’s intensity.

I’m actually a big fan of Moscato, both in still and frizzante forms, and recently I had the opportunity to taste a couple of new world offerings from Jacob’s Creek (Australia) and Motos Liberty (California).

Jacob’s Creek

The Jacob’s Creek is a frizzante, or sparkling style, but compared to other sparkling wines the Jacob’s creek would be considered mildly ‘spritzed’. The color of the Jacob’s Creek was very light and from a distance, the wine could easily be confused for something other than wine (like water) once it’s fizz dissipates.

The nose offers traditional hints of honey, peach and pear, along with mild mineral and slightly metallic notes; although, I would consider the nose of this wine to be a touch faint. On the palate the wine offers a very nice balance of effervescence and acid, along with honey and pear.

I sampled both of these wines by themselves, as well as with some dessert – it just so happened to be my mother’s birthday so we had some homemade New York style lemon cheese cake and some very delicious Smores Cupcakes after dinner. Both desserts offered some very rich and challenging flavors for a dessert wine to tackle, but the Jacob’s Creek was certainly up to the challenge. In fact, I preferred the Jacob’s Creek with dessert. At 8% alcohol and with the well-crafted acid levels, that’s exactly what this wine was designed to do.

Wine: Jacob’s Creek
Variety: Moscato
Vintage: 2010
Alcohol: 8%
Rating: 84
Price: $8.00

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Motos Liberty

The Motos Liberty is a still, or non-sparkling Moscato. Where the Jacob’s Creek may have lacked in forward fruit, the Motos Liberty offered up a rich caramel and honey. The Motos has a bit more alcohol at 10%, which undoubtedly helped in intensifying the nose and front palate. However, where the Jacob’s Creek excelled in structure and acid, the Motos fell flat, literally. But, again, this is by design. The Motos is really meant to stand-alone. That said, it’s caramel and honey flavors were a nice complement to the Smores cupcakes, with its blend of graham cracker and marshmallow.

So what you have here are two examples of an old world varietal produced in the new world, but achieving very different results. I couldn’t help to think that together they would have made the perfect dessert wine. While I prefer the fresher effervescent style of the Jacob’s Creek, both wines are worthy of consideration for your next dessert wine pairing.

A Salute!

Wine: Motos Liberty
Variety: Moscato
Vintage: 2009
Alcohol: 10%
Rating: 84
Price: $10.99

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Disclosure: These wines were received as a sample.

We’re checking out another sparkling wine today, but this one is a sweet, dessert sparkler: Rosa Regale

To be honest, I was a little reluctant to review this wine just based on price.  In my opinion, Banfi wines are overpriced.  For a while I was seeing this wine sell for $25+, but recently I’ve seen it for $20 (I guess one of the benefits of the sluggish economy).  Not that I’ve never spent $20 for a bottle of wine, but for what it is, I’d like to see this one for about $15-16.  However,  this is an interesting wine and I don’t see much Brachetto from any other producers, so I thought it deserved a mention.  And for something unique at a party, I might drop $20 to bring this.

The first time I tasted this was at the Cincinnati International Wine Festival, where there where several women “ohhing” and “ahhing” about it.  So guys take note, if you want to make women “ohhh” and “ahhh” but your personality isn’t enough to do the trick, this wine might help you out.

To be honest, the aromas from this wine don’t do much for me.  It’s slightly floral with strawberry and raspberry aromatics.  But the palate is where this wine shines. As I said, this is a dessert sparkler, so it’s on the sweet side.  It has loads of strawberry and raspberry flavors, which is typical of this variety.

It goes great with chocolate.  Try pairing this one with some chocolate mousse, with which I think it would be divine.

Wine: Banfi Rosa Regale
Variety: Brachetto d’Acqui
Vintage: 2007
Alcohol: 7.0%
Rating: 86
Price: $19.99

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I’ll be the first to admit, that I’m not a big fan of sweet wine, outside of a few very well-done Botrytized wines.  Nonetheless, I receive some every now and then and I’ll still review them for the benefit of those who do prefer sweet wine.

Although I’m not a big fan of sweet wines, there’s something about Muscat that I like.  It’s floral and interesting, and if you ever have the chance to taste a Muscat grape you’ll notice that you find that same perfumed characteristic in the grape right off the vine, not just in the wine.

The first thing to strike me about this wine is a clear apricot aroma.  I’d say this Moscato has the most pronounced apricot aroma I’ve ever smelled in a wine.  There’s also plenty of honeysuckle and other floral notes.  The palate is quite sweet, but the wine also has good acidity to keep it balanced.  The flavors are predominantly apricot and peach, sweetened with honey.  The finish is quick.  It’s a good wine, but not extraordinary.

After I finished my tasting notes, I enjoyed this wine with some spicy pad thai and it was a great match.

Wine: Terra d’Oro
Variety: Moscato
Vintage: 2008
Alcohol: 11%
Rating: 83
Price: $16.00

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Disclosure: This wine was received as a sample.

If you want to share something sweet this Valentine’s Day there are a number of fantastic dessert wines you can try.  I don’t drink a lot of dessert wine, but when I do I like to be adventurous and try new things.

Monbazillac is something that you probably haven’t had before, but you may want to give it a shot.  It’s a wine produced from grapes effected by noble rot.  When I first heard of noble rot, I didn’t know what to think.  ”Noble” sounds like a good thing, but “rot” does not sound so appealing.  And grapes effected with this benign fungus look much more rotten than they look noble.  In fact, if I came across grapes looking like this on my grape vines I’d be inclined to put on a pair of latex gloves that go up to my elbow to remove this contaminated-looking mess.  Making wine from the grapes would not even cross my mind.

Image Source: WikiMedia Commons

Luckily, someone at some point in time decided to try making wine with these grapes and the results are spectacular.  Noble rot removes much of the moisture from the grapes, this results in a high natural sugar level in the grapes which can be used to make concentrated sweet wines.  These are also referred to as botrytized wines, named after botrytis (the fungus that causes noble rot.)

The most renowned botrytized wine is Sauternes, which is made from Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle grapes in the Sauternes region of France.  Sauternes is often an exceptional wine, but it also tends to be rather pricey.  Better deals can be found with wines from  neighboring regions, such as Monbazillac.  In a way, you can think of Monbazillac as a “poor man’s Sauternes.”

Monbazillac, like Sauternes, can be produced with different blends of Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc and/or Muscadelle.  The blend in this Monbazillac from Grande Maison includes 35% Muscadelle, 50 % Semillon and 15% Sauvignon Blanc.

The first thing I notice about this wine is a somewhat grassy aroma.  There is also a nutty quality along with some pear, lemon and mineral in the bouquet.  The palate is apple, pear and soft peach with honey on the long and lingering finish.

This is a very nice dessert wine and only $10.59 for a 375ml bottle.  I should note that many dessert wines come in smaller bottles and the prices are what you would expect to pay for a full size bottle of non-dessert wine.  But you will typically consume a lot less of a dessert wine at one sitting than you would a table wine.

Wine: Grande Maison – Cuvee des Anges
Variety: Monbazillac
Vintage: 2005
Alcohol: 13.5%
Rating: 89
Price: $10.59 (375ml)

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Hooray, hooray… it’s Wine Blogging Wednesday.  It’s been a few months since I’ve taken part in this event due to the fact that the last few themes were “off equity” for me, as we say in the marketing business.   Actually, I considered sitting this one out too as “dessert wine” is an area I don’t know as well as other wines.  But I was ultimately compelled to challenge myself with something new, plus a personal connection to the theme sealed the deal.  More on that in a minute, but first…

“What the heck is Wine Blogging Wednesday?” you ask.  It’s a monthly event when dozens of wine bloggers, like me, from around the world all write about the same theme.  There is a host each month who picks the theme and summarizes all the contributions.  The host today is Joe Roberts at 1WineDude and the theme he’s picked is “Baked Goods.”  By that he means wines that are deliberately heated, or Madeirized. The resulting wines are sweet and caramelized.  Since these wines can be hard to come by, he’s also allowing fortified wines such as Port.

The wine I picked for this occasion is a Madeira—the style of wine from which the term Madeirized was coined.  I wanted to do a Madeira specifically because of the personal connection I mentioned… I have Madeira in my blood!  Not because I’ve consumed too much of it or participated in strange intravenous things.  According to some research my father found, part of my ancestral lineage tracks back to a guy named Domingo Madeiras, who supposedly was born in Portugal in the early 17th century and immigrated to the US.  Based on the name, I have a hunch that the lineage leads back to the island of Madeira in some way. I don’t know if it’s 100% accurate, but I like the idea of having a bit of Portuguese in me so I’m running with it.

Madeira wines can be quite pricey, especially as you get into the well aged Madeiras which are the most prized.  For this reason my options as a “cheap wine” guy were limited and the brand I selected, Broadbent, is a fairly common option on the Madeira shelf.  As such, I’m probably not the only wine blogger writing about this wine today.

I didn’t just go for the absolute cheapest price I could find and instead opted for a $20 bottle that has spent at least 5 years in oak in hopes to find a moderate upgrade in quality.  While I advocate finding great deals on inexpensive wines, I haven’t had much luck on finding good, cheap dessert wines.  Thus, my rationale for spending my upper limit here.  Of course I should note that although the bottle price is at the upper end of my preferred price range, this is a type of wine that you don’t drink much of in one sitting and the bottle lasts longer than a typical, everyday wine.

As I previously mentioned, Madeira is intentionally heated in what’s referred to as an “estufagem” aging process, meant to replicate the effect a long sea voyage through tropical climates would have on aging the wine.  In inexpensive wines this can be done in a concrete cask surrounded with heating coils for a minimum of 3 months.  It can also be done in large wooden casks in a room heated much like a sauna for 6 months to a year.  But the highest quality Madeiras are aged in barrels in sun-heated rooms, where they are left to age for years.  That’s the case with this Broadbent Madeira.

The Broadbent Madeira Reserve has been aged for 5 years.  The grapes in this wine include Negra Mole, Complexa, Tinta da Madeira and Triunfo.  While not as refined as some vintage Madeiras aged for 20 years or more, this is still a very good and interesting treat.

The color is a rusty caramel hue.  The nose presents a smoky, molasses bouquet with a hint of orange peel.  The orange came out a lot stronger on the palate, along with toffee, figs and nutmeg.  The toffee flavor lingers on the finish, which also brings a touch of heat.

You can definitely smell and taste the oxidation, but it isn’t a turn off like it would be in a dry wine.  There is a lot of character to this wine.  The toffee characteristic is dominant and enjoyable.  It’s been a while since I’ve really enjoyed a dessert wine and this is a nice welcome back.

Wine: Broadbent Reserve – 5 Years
Varietal: Madeira
Alcohol: 19%
Rating: 89
Price: $20.00