Sweet Company for Stollen and Warm Apples

Icing sugar on your good sweater

Stollen has a remarkable ability to scatter crumbs and sugar. No sooner is a slice on the plate than the icing sugar finds its way somewhere it shouldn't. On the palate, things are more orderly: butter, dried fruit, perhaps almonds, and a rich, dense texture that slowly melts away. It calls for a wine that neither shies away from the sweetness nor disappears beneath the weight of the bake.

Sweet Madeira or Tawny Port are good starting points for classic butter stollen. With apple strudel and many baked apples, a sweet Riesling Auslese often feels livelier. These three desserts may belong to the cosy season, but they don't necessarily need the same bottle. There is quite a distance in flavour between crumbly stollen and a tart apple with only a light sprinkling of sugar.

The wine needs a sweet backbone

Sweet foods make wine seem drier, more acidic and more bitter. Alongside stollen, a dry red wine can therefore lose its fruit and taste unpleasantly astringent. Even a fragrant dry Gewürztraminer isn't automatically a good match. A sweet-smelling aroma is no substitute for sugar in the wine. As a practical guide, the wine should taste at least as sweet as the mouthful it accompanies.

With stollen, density matters too. Butter, raisins and candied fruit demand more substance than an airy apple cake. Sweet Madeira, in the Malmsey style, for example, combines concentrated sweetness with supporting acidity. Its nutty, caramel-like aromas can echo toasted almonds and the crust of the bake. The acidity provides a fresh counterpoint to the butter rather than adding to the sense of heaviness.

Tawny Port is also sweet and often brings notes of nuts and dried fruit. That makes it particularly suited to raisin-rich stollen or a baked apple with a nut filling. Both fortified wine styles do, however, contain considerably more alcohol than a light dessert wine. Small servings therefore make sense. Anyone sensitive to the warming sensation of alcohol will often find a suitable sweet Riesling Auslese a more comfortable choice.

The apple sets the pace

A strudel can stay fresh and tart inside, or become quite sweet with sugar and raisins. Then there are the crisp layers of pastry and, sometimes, a generous helping of vanilla sauce. Judge the whole plate, then, not just the fruit. A sweet Riesling Auslese brings acidity and fruit that are particularly well suited to a strudel that still tastes distinctly of apple.

The apple's acidity makes the wine seem less acidic, fuller and sweeter. If the wine itself has very little acidity, the combination can feel broad. A sweet wine with pronounced acidity is more likely to retain definition. Even so, it needs enough sweetness for the sauce and filling. A generous amount of caramel sauce may call for a more concentrated version. The same basic principle applies to strawberries and summer desserts, even if the kitchen smells quite different then.

With baked apples, the filling has a particularly strong say. Marzipan increases sweetness, walnuts bring bitterness too, and raisins add more concentrated fruit. Firm tannins in the wine can amplify the bitterness of the nuts. A sweet Madeira often makes more sense here than a tannin-rich red. If the apple is filled with dark chocolate, it is worth looking at dark chocolate and its wine companions. The chocolate version needs to be considered on its own terms.

Small glasses, warm plates

Serve dessert wine on the cool side rather than at room temperature, but not so cold that its aromas disappear. The warm dessert already supplies plenty of warmth. A small glass creates a lovely alternation between fragrant baking and a refreshing sip. For more seasonal inspiration, see the article on wine at Christmas.

For an experiment at home, divide a piece of apple strudel into two portions. Leave one plain and add vanilla sauce to the other. Taste the same sweet Riesling after each and notice whether it seems drier alongside the sauce. You will soon see whether the bottle suits the actual dessert or only the apple inside it.

For an alcohol-free option, a mixture of naturally cloudy apple juice and mild black tea makes a useful alternative, with a little cinnamon if you like. Steep the tea briefly so that its bitterness doesn't dominate. Use less tea with very sweet stollen. The result doesn't imitate Port, but accompanies fruit and baking in its own pleasantly understated way.