Affogato

Affogato

Assuming a scoop of vanilla ice cream with a shot of hot espresso poured over it.

Two things rule most wine out before it reaches the table. The dish is sweet, so a dry wine tastes sour and hollow beside it, and the coffee is bitter, so any tannin stacks on that bitterness and turns harsh. What is left is a sweet, concentrated wine with a roasted, nutty, caramel character of its own, which mirrors the coffee instead of arguing with it.

Pairs Perfectly. Tawny Port, Douro, Portugal. Years in small barrels turn it walnut brown and give it caramel, fig and roasted nut, which is close to a description of espresso. It is sweet enough to meet the ice cream, has kept enough acidity to stop the cream cloying, and its tannin has long since dropped away.

Pairs Well. Pedro Ximénez, Jerez, Spain. Grapes dried in the sun until they are raisins, giving a wine of molasses and date so thick it pours slowly. Spaniards pour it straight over ice cream and call it pudding.

Pairs Well. Vin Santo, Tuscany, Italy. Dried grapes again, aged for years in small barrels in the roof space, with a nutty, honeyed, faintly oxidised depth. The Italian answer to an Italian dessert.

Worth Seeking Out

Rutherglen Muscat, Victoria, Australia. Sweet, dark and fortified with raisin, toffee and coffee, and aged for years in old barrels in the Australian heat. It tastes closer to espresso than any other wine on this list.

Avoid

Dry wine, and anything tannic. Against sweetened cream a dry wine reads thin and sour, and tannin and coffee bitterness compound into something genuinely harsh.

Failing That

A Marsala, Sicily, Italy.

If All Else Fails

Cream Sherry, Jerez.

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