A dessert wine is so named for its sweetness and the Boozebud selection of dessert wine includes some of the best from both here at home in Australia and from international producers. When you choose Boozebud, you are choosing to order online from alcohol distributors who guarantee you the lowest price across our entire range of beer, wine and spirits. Instead of setting prices and creating specials, we follow what every other major drink supplier is doing and copy them. This means that our entire range is guaranteed to be as low cost as any current special available anywhere in Australia. We bring you the largest selection of craft beer producers, the best in champagne and sparkling wine, including sparkling rose, as well as the best in spirits.
Choose from genuine cognac and pisco; our rum, whiskey, brandy, tequila and mezcals and all sourced from the very best producers worldwide. Choose from our selection of premium beer including traditional beer brands and makers, alcoholic ginger beer, IPA beer, pilsner and stout beer among many, many more. We know and love our beer, so our selection is the biggest craft beer collection available.
Shopping online means never having to leave the house and now you can do that when it comes time to stock your bar again. Our entire range is available to order from our online store and is delivered directly to your door across the country from Brisbane to Perth, Adelaide to Canberra
What is a dessert wine?
A dessert wine, sometimes known as fortified wines, are particularly sweet and usually quite highly alcoholic beverages made for sipping with a meal. To produce a dessert wine, there must be a high concentration of both sugar and alcohol and when youre making alcohol, you usually have to choose between sugar or strength. The fermentation process the process that produces alcohol in the first place is made possible by yeast. Yeast is an organism that feeds on sugar and when introduced to a mix of sugars and water such as fruit juice or barley wort it will breed and eat up the sugars in the liquid, producing alcohol as a by-product. Once there is no more sugar available, the yeast begins to die off and the resultant mixture is a fermented liquid usually containing little sweetness and concentrations of alcohol.
So, how do dessert wine makers manage to create such a sweet wine that still has quite a high alcoholic content? There are few ways in which wine makers can increase the sugar levels in their final product and they include: using grape varieties naturally very high in sugars, adding sugar or honey before the fermentation (also known as chaptalisation) or after the fermentation (also known as s ssreserve) as a unfermented must, adding alcohol (also known as fortification) and finally by removing water to concentrate the natural sugars. The last process can be done in one of three different ways to produce three different types of dessert wine: air drying grapes, freezing the water out (also known as making ice wine), and by using noble rot (a type of fungal bacteria which desiccates the grape).
A vigneron will also sometimes ensure that grapes are left on the vine to fully ripen and by green harvesting. Green harvesting reduces the number of grapes on the vine and thereby concentrating the sugars created in the grapes that are left exposed to the sun. Warmth plays a vital role in harvesting naturally sweet grape varieties so wines like a Semillon, a sweet and dry white wine, will need a climate that gets plenty of warm weather and some excellent varieties are therefore created here in Australia.
What is a good dessert wine?
A good dessert wine is one that you enjoy drinking. There are a range of different types available such as the Italian Vin Santo. This straw coloured and highly sweet wine is sometimes also called holy wine. It is made using the air drying method. Traditionally, the grapes are dried on straw mats in a warm and well ventilated areas of the house or by hanging them to air dry. Other Italian dessert wines include Moscato, made from the Muscat grape, which while sweet is not generally highly alcoholic. In other Muscat varieties made in south-west France, the process involves stopping fermentation with up to 10% of 95% grape spirit.
Fortified wines are usually sherries like the Pedro Ximénez. The Pedro Ximénez variety is actually a raisin wine, made with air dried grapes, that is then fortified and aged like other sherries.
How long can you keep a dessert wine?
Dessert wines do not generally have a very long shelf life, usually keeping up to three weeks after they have been opened. In the case of sherry, the mould used to create them is oxidised throughout the process which means that they will usually keep for between one and three months after opening. A tawny port, although possibly aged for up to 30 years, has very little resilience to oxygen and so even they will only last about two months after opening.
Madeira wines from Portugal are made by deliberately heating and oxidising the wine while it matures which means that not only are very distinctive flavours produced, but it also has a very long shelf life after opening of about three years if kept in moderate temperatures and properly stored. The key to keeping any wine is maintaining temperature. Large fluctuations will heavily affect even unopened wine.
What is fortified wine?
Fortification refers to the adding of alcohol to a dessert wine to make it a fortified wine. The alcohol used will be a distilled spirit, usually brandy, and the resultant product can be classified as a port (originally from Portugal), sherry (Spanish), madeira, marsala (Italian), Commandaria wine (Cyprian and aged in oak barrels), mistelle (from France), and the aromatised wine vermouth. Sherry, like French cognac and Mexican tequila, must only be produced from the Sherry triangle in Spain an area in the province of Cádiz between Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa María.
Originally, fortifying a wine allowed it to last longer while it was stored. The addition of distilled alcohol meant that it would keep for longer than without it and even though more modern methods have since been developed for keeping wine fresh, fortification is still an art practiced all over the world. By adding the fortification to both a red and white wine variety, new and interesting flavours are created, and the sweetness is usually retained because the fortification will occur before fermentation is complete. Adding alcohol kills what remaining yeast may still be actively fermenting the wine, Appellation laws may also heavily dictate how a wine may be fortified. For example, in the United States only fruit based spirits may be used to fortify wine.
Dessert wines are the perfect accompaniment to sweet desserts or served chilled and for enjoying in warm climates. Our selection of dessert wines and fortified wines include everything from dry white wine varieties from Chile, our selection of Australian sweet white wines, fortified wines including port and sherry. Order online from Boozebud and have your selection of delicious beverages delivered directly to your door.
Boozebud
Whatever you love to drink, you'll find it available to order online at Boozebud and conveniently delivered to your door anywhere in Australia. If it's the best beer from your favourite producers or boutique operations carefully crafting their own signature tastes, you'll find it at Boozebud. If you're a wine drinker, browse our extensive selection of wineries, varietals and blends. Our selection of spirits and liqueurs include the big name producers that everybody knows as loves as well as tasty varieties sourced from the finest producing regions around the world.
Our entire range of alcohol is available to order online for the lowest prices. We guarantee it. We don't set our prices; we just match the lowest ones on offer found anywhere in Australia. If you find our stock listed for a lower price anywhere else, then we'll match it. We also offer online-only prices that no one else can match across all of your favourites.
We are home to Australia's largest collections of craft and boutique producers which means that our range of beer, wine, spirits and liqueurs include selections plucked from the finest producers tinkering away quietly, developing the best craft beers, the smoothest whisky, in both local and far-off places that the big name alcohol distributors have never heard of. If you let us know what you like to drink, then we can personalise your shopping experience on Boozebud. We'll suggest recommendations that we know you'll love based on what we're drinking and loving too.
We are always open so you can enjoy ordering online 24/7. Delivery covers all of Australia with expected arrivals in the capital cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane within 3 to 5 business days. We are always looking to improve our delivery options and are constantly improving arrival times in more capital cities so you can get the best tasting beverages that you love delivered even faster.
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