Let the fall festivities continue!! Come home to a nice treat after your adventures at pumpkin patches and corn mazes. This wine and food pairing celebrate some of autumn’s many blessings – apples and late harvest wine. I used an apple crumble recipe from the Café Delites blog and had crisp gala apples for the recipe. If you want simple, like VERY SIMPLE, and delicious, this recipe fits the bill (the recipe is at the end of the post). The ingredients list is straight forward. You mix around some ingredients, pop it in the oven, and BAMM …… tasty apple crumble. The cooking time is 40 minutes - longer than I’d normally like, but it’s worth the wait because the apples become really soft. It complements the crunchy texture of the crumble. Personally, the next time I make this, I would add less sugar than the recipe calls for because it was a tad sweeter than I like.
The cherry on top of this fabulous dessert is when you drizzle Late Harvest wine on it. Late Harvest wine is made from overly ripe grapes picked later in the harvesting season, so the flavours are more concentrated and sweet; hence, why it’s a dessert wine. Of course, there’s no better Late Harvest than the one from Quail’s Gate. I raved about the Quail’s Gate 2017 Optima Late Harvest wine on my first blog post and made sure to stock up on their 2018 vintage when I was in Kelowna. Their 2018 vintage has notes of apricots, honeysuckle, and orange blossom with a good viscosity and lighter mouthfeel than ice wine. The characteristics of Late Harvest is balanced with the apple crumble and creates a lovely mesh of flavours and textures in your mouth. Some alternatives to Late Harvest if you don’t have any readily available are Ice Wine and flavoured liqueurs like Irish Cream. Ultimately, this pairing is bomb! It’s delicious, healthy, and even counts as breakfast too (just to make your mornings even sweeter). Most people WFH these days, so a touch of alcohol in the morning won’t hurt your day. Be sure to warm up the apple crumble and chill the late harvest before serving, my friends! Enjoy and stay healthy!
If you haven’t seen my other wine and food pairings in the F4FP series, check them out!
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