Mahleb — flavouring profile

Mahleb is the ground kernel of a wild cherry, and it tastes the part — a bittersweet almond-and-cherry, marzipan-like note that flavours the sweet breads and biscuits of Greece and the Levant — so it is a dessert pairing, calling for a sweet wine that mirrors its nutty, cherried character.

The compounds that matter. Ground from the seed of the St Lucie cherry, mahleb carries benzaldehyde — the almond-and-marzipan compound of stone-fruit kernels — alongside coumarin, which adds a sweet, hay-like, faintly bitter floral edge, and a cherry note from the fruit it comes from. The effect is almond, cherry and a gentle bitterness at once. Mahleb is a baking spice almost without exception: Greek tsoureki and Easter breads, Levantine ka'ak and ma'amoul, sweet biscuits. So the dish is sweet, and the wine must be too, or it tastes hollow beside the bake.

What it demands of a wine. Sweetness to match the bake — a dry wine reads thin and sour against sugar. A nutty, almond or dried-fruit character mirrors mahleb's marzipan note, or a cherried sweetness echoes its fruit. A little of the wine's own sweetness also settles mahleb's faint bitterness. Keep tannin low and oak gentle; this is a delicate, sweet-spiced register, not a powerful one.

Seek. For mahleb biscuits and ma'amoul, a nutty, dried-fruit sweet wine — all almond, fig and honey — is the marzipan mirror, the classic partner to almond biscuits. For the cherry side of the spice, a sweet red, full of black cherry, echoes the kernel's fruit directly. For lighter, gently sweet breads such as tsoureki, a delicate, low-alcohol sweet sparkling, grapey and floral, keeps it fresh.

Avoid. Dry wines of any colour, which a sweet bake leaves hollow and tart. Firm, tannic reds, out of place against a delicate sweet spice. Heavily oaked wines, whose vanilla muddles the clean almond-and-cherry note.

Three to reach for. Vin Santo (Tuscany); Recioto della Valpolicella (Veneto); Moscato d'Asti (Piedmont).