Willemijn Lindeboom
There are different Italian dessert wines… They are all sweet, but what are the differences between Holy wine, raisin en through liquoroso and how are they made?
vin santo sounds like wine santo and that sounds like 'holy wine' in Dutch. How can wine be sacred? Only those who have drunk heavily can begin to see wine that way, right? I'll get back to it in a minute.
We first try, while we are still sober, to list the sweet Italian wines. Italian dessert wines are all sweet (to a greater or lesser extent) and all have a fairly high alcohol content. Most are made from grapes that are somehow sweeter than normal grapes.
Dessert wines are often referred to in Italian meditation wines (meditation wines). The idea is that they are so delicious and rich in flavor that you should take a small sip and taste them well, while contemplating the other beautiful things in life. This is of course a modern and somewhat romantic interpretation. In the old days, normal people did not meditate, at least not officially.
About the sweet grapes
Just some knowledge beforehand. Grapes are always sweet once ripe. The sugar from the grapes is converted into alcohol during fermentation and thus wine is formed. That is a natural process. The yeasts that convert sugar into alcohol are active up to a certain percentage of alcohol.
If there is a lot of sugar in the grapes, the wine has a high alcohol percentage. For example, normal wines have a higher alcohol percentage after a warm, dry summer than after a summer with less heat and some rain. During fermentation there comes a limit at a certain point where the alcohol content stops further fermentation and sweet wine is created above that.
There are several reasons why grapes become extra sweet. There are some grape varieties that are extra sweet in their own right, such as the moscato (and there are several varieties of that). Moscato wines are normal wines where the fermentation process is stopped at a certain point so that a sweet wine is created without much alcohol.
Most Italian dessert wines, however, are made from dried grapes. The grapes are dried on the bush, but more often on long mats in a protected and well-ventilated place. In Tuscany, for example, in the attics of barns or houses. By drying the grapes, the sugar content is relatively higher (less liquid) and you get a sweet wine.
The Italian dessert wines
Well, let's talk about the different types of Italian dessert wine: vin santo, passito, and vino liquoroso.
Vin Santo
I have already mentioned vin santo, the typical sweet wine from Tuscany and Umbria, often on the menu together with cantucci. Cantucci (or Cantuccini) are rock hard cookies with, among other things, almonds in them and these cookies are often dipped in vin santo. Some consider it sacrilegious, but despite these protests, it is and remains a popular practice.
To make real vin santo, which few Italians do commercially, you have to be patient. After the grapes are dried, they are pressed and they put all that stuff in small wooden barrels and then seal them well (often cement is involved).
These barrels remain in an attic with the aim of allowing the vin santo to experience all seasons. In the warm seasons the brew ferments (which is why the cork is fixed with cement) and in the cool periods it comes to rest. After a minimum of 3 years the wine is ready and they put it in small bottles.
But why is this Italian dessert wine called 'holy wine'? There are various theories about the origin of the name, but it is probably so called because the wine was used in the past at mass, or because the grapes were originally grown in the Holy or Holy Week were squeezed.
Normally the vin santo is always white, or rather: ocher yellow. There is also a red variant, but you rarely see it. The grapes used are Trebbiano and Malvasia.
Passito
Wither means to wither and letting grapes dry is a kind of wither (the juice draws out). In principle, the vin santo is therefore also a passito wine, but because this wine is made in a different way, it can be called vin santo. Other sweet wines are then called raisin of fortified wine.
The most famous passito is that of the Sicilian island of Pantelleria. Passito di Pantelleria, indeed. The grapes are dried in the sun and then made into wine in the normal way, which is drinkable about a year later.
Only the Zibibbo grape is used for the Passito di Pantelleria. A grape that grows like a bush rather than along long lines. Many other passito wines come from Sicily, such as the Moscato di Noto passito, the Malvasia delle Lipari passito and the Siracusa passito.
Another well-known passito is that of the sagrantino from Umbria. This is a red passito. Furthermore, there are passitos from every Italian wine region such as the Greco di Bianco from Calabria, the Moscato di Trani from Puglia, the Erbaluce di Caluso from Piedmont or the Moscato Bianco passito di Loazzolo also from Piedmont, the Malvasia di Bosa passito from Sardinia… And so on.
Liqueur wine
A completely different story are the vini liquorosic (literally liqueur wines). These are wines that the Italians make in a completely different way. The base is a normal wine to which they add some form of alcohol (a liqueur or grappa), or mistella (that is grape juice mixed with alcohol so that the grape juice has not started to ferment).
The most famous Italian fortified wine is the marsala from Sicily. This one can't be sweet either, just like port.
De vini liquorosic were originally created to extend the shelf life of the wine. Wine was transported by sailing ship, mostly to England, and if the wine started fermenting again on the way, that was a problem. Coincidentally, the taste of the wine also became different and often better and so this custom became an indispensable tradition.
So, now you know a thing or two about Italian dessert wine! What is your favorite Italian sweet wine?
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