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How to pair wine with... donuts? 🍩🍷

May 04, 2024

 

 

 

Hi Wine Friends,

Welcome to another edition of talking all things food and wine pairing. This week is part 1 of 2 in covering one of my favorite genres: sweet and spicy! Both sides of this flavor spectrum require special attention when it comes to finding the right wines to pair, and the requirements have more in common than you might think.

To put these principles in action, I’m visiting some of my favorite local artisans in the sweet and spicy world. This week I hung out with Mikiko Donuts and next week I’m visiting Kate’s Ice Cream and Sibeiho Sambal to take the conversation even further.

Watch the video episode of my tasting with Mikiko here!

But first let me explain this pairing principle in more detail: Sweet matches sweet and spicy. That’s right, a wine with residual sugar is the answer to both ends of this flavor spectrum! Spicy foods ask for wines with just a touch of sweetness, but desserts ask for truly sweet wines. So that’s what we’ll be exploring today.

When it comes to desserts, the wine should be at least as sweet as the dish itself. We’ve talked about the importance of acidity and how it’s a pairing jack-of-all-trades (matching brightness, cutting through richness, balancing heat and more), but sweetness is not quite as versatile. When your dish leans towards the sweeter side, it can actually make the wine taste more bitter or even astringent, especially if the wine is fermented fully dry (meaning all of the grape sugar has been converted into alcohol).

So in order to highlight (rather than harsh) the dish’s flavors, you want to pick a wine that’s as least as sweet as the dish itself. This means that you want to find a proper dessert wine, rather than just an off-dry wine (which we’ll explore next week in relation to spicy dishes).

When it comes to dessert wines, the options are endless. From iconic classics like Port and Sauternes to hidden gems like Bayuls and Vin Santo, there's a world of sweetness waiting to be explored. For our purposes, I've selected mostly mainstream favorites (with just one or two offbeat wonders) so that you can recreate these pairings for yourself.

Sidenote: if you’d like to understand dry and sweet wines in more depth, make sure to take my course Seven Day Sommelier. It’s only $197 and covers the same materials as the first two levels of both the Court of Master Sommeliers and the Wine Spirits Educational Trust. Plus, it’s fully digital so you can do it in your own time, from the comfort of your home, and you own the lessons forever! Enroll here.
 
 
 

  

  

  
 

 

Donuts + Dessert Wine
 
 

  

  

  
 

Portland has a lot of great donuts, but Mikiko is my favorite. They make mochi donuts (from Hawaiian sticky rice flour), which have the most dense, succulent texture - like sponge cake and a gummy bear had a donut baby - in super creative flavors (strawberry yuzu, horchata pudding, rootbeer float and honeydew melon boba, just to name a few). Everything they make is gluten-free, dairy-free and nut-free but you would never know they were 'healthy' just by tasting them. They hit all the indulgence brain buttons!

 

Mikiko picked out three of their brand new spring flavors for me to pair wine to: Honey Lavender, Passionfruit Curd and Salted Sunflower Chocolate. These flavors just dropped so head into Mikiko now (and then your local wine shop) to try these pairings for yourself:

 
 
 

  

  

  
 
 
 

Honey Lavender + Tokaj

Tokaj, the iconic dessert wine of Hungary, is made from the Furmint grape in the northeast region of Tokaj. This wine, praised by Louis XIV as “the wine of kings and king of wines,” develops its distinct flavors thanks to the unique climate and the presence of botrytis, or ‘noble rot,’ which concentrates sugar levels in the grapes. With its naturally honey and meadow flower aromas, Tokaj was a shoe-in to pair with Honey Lavender. Tokaj has a touch of stone fruit (a perfectly juicy apricot), a kiss of exotic spice (ginger, saffron, marzipan) and high-toned acidity (that refreshes the palate like a cool mountain stream). The luscious sweetness of the wine elevates the sweetness of the donut, highlighting the delicate honeyed flavor. Tokaj’s honeysuckle and jasmine aromas make the lavender pop and the bracing acidity lightens the weight of the donut, ensuring the sweetness remains delightful rather than cloying.
 
 

  

  

  
 
 
 

Passionfruit Curd + Sauternes

 

For the Passionfruit Curd donut, I selected the classic sweet wine Sauternes, known for its natural tropical notes. Many may not realize it, but Sauternes is primarily made from Sauvignon Blanc grapes, which contribute to its lush tropical flavors, especially in late-harvested styles. Similar to Tokaj, Sauternes is crafted from botrytis-infected grapes, resulting in concentrated sugars. In this nectar of the gods, Sauvignon Blanc is blended with Semillon and Moscatel, offering indulgent tropical notes of pineapple, mango, and passionfruit that perfectly complement the playful flavors of the donut. The wine's subtle butterscotch, coconut, and caramel undertones enhance the creaminess of the donut's curd filling. And the wine's balancing acidity refreshes the palate, making you feel like you could just keep eating donuts… (is this a good thing or a bad thing?)

 
 
 

  

  

  
 
 
 

Salted Sunflower Chocolate + 10 Year Tawny Port

 To complement the darker, heavier flavors of the Salted Sunflower Chocolate donut, we turned to a red grape-based dessert wine: 10 Year Tawny Port. Unlike white wines, which lack the tannins needed to stand up to chocolate, Port's red grape base provides the perfect match for this beloved sweet. A fortified dessert wine, Port undergoes a unique process where brandy is added before fermentation is complete, leaving residual grape sugar for sweetness and boosting the alcohol content. Our choice, the 10 Year Tawny Port, offers a blend of different vintages (averaging 10 years) aged oxidatively, resulting in nuttier, richer flavors of cocoa, toffee, and caramel. This savory richness pairs harmoniously with the sea salt and nuttiness of the sunflower in the donut. And, because ports come from red grapes, they contain tannin, which can stand up to the bitterness of chocolate - enhancing its charms rather than turning it bitter. It’s giving ‘adult Reese’s’ and I’m here for it!
 
 

  

  

  
 

 

Ready For Something Sweet?

 

I hope this inspired you to not only splurge on dessert, but also on a dessert wine!

 

Stay tuned next week as we taste a few more dessert wines with Kate’s delicious plant-based ice cream, and then shift gears and pair wines with the spicy Singaporean sambals of Sibeiho. I love to highlight other female entrepreneurs (especially Portland-based ones!) so I hope you’ll check them both out!

 

And if you’re enjoying this pairing series and want to learn more, be sure to enroll in my course Seven Day Sommelier by May 18th so that you can join in my Food & Wine Pairing Masterclass (open to all students past and present). For less than the price of a spa day, you can be drinking wine at the level of a sommelier, minus the stress and pretense. Can’t wait to see you in the course!
 
 

 

 

 
 
 
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