Cheesecake

Assuming a classic cheesecake on a biscuit base, baked or set, with the lemon lift most kitchens give it.

Cheesecake is the one dessert that is sour as well as sweet, and that is what decides the wine. The lactic tang of the cheese sits under the sugar, so a sweet wine without matching acidity tastes flat and syrupy against it, while the dairy fat needs cutting as surely as any cream sauce. High acidity and real sweetness in the same glass is a narrower thing than it sounds.

Pairs Perfectly

Vouvray moelleux, Loire, France. Pairs Perfectly. Chenin Blanc picked late enough to finish properly sweet while keeping the sharp, almost cider-like acidity the grape never loses. That acid answers the lactic tang note for note, the quince and orchard fruit run straight into the lemon, and it costs no more than a decent bottle of red. Nothing else in sweet wine does both jobs this cleanly.

Pairs Well

Riesling Mosel Auslese, Germany. Pairs Well. Sweet, searingly fresh, and only eight or nine per cent alcohol, so it lifts a rich pudding without adding heat to it.

Tokaji Aszu, Tokaj, Hungary. Pairs Well. Botrytis concentration with orange zest and marmalade that meet the lemon head on, carried on some of the highest acidity in sweet wine.

Worth Seeking Out

Noble Late Harvest Chenin Blanc, Stellenbosch, South Africa. The same grape as the lead, grown in the sun: riper, rounder, tropical where the Loire is quince. It suits a baked cheesecake with a caramelised top where the leaner Loire version suits a set one.

Avoid

Sweet wines with soft acidity, which turn syrupy and heavy against the tang, and any dry wine at all, which the sugar leaves sour.

Failing That

A Monbazillac, Bergerac, France.

If All Else Fails

Samos Vin Doux, Greece.

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