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Percentage of all wine auction sales at Sotheby’s in 2020 attributable to a single estate—the Domaine de la Romanée Conti. Considering Burgundy only, auction sales of DRC wines constituted a whopping 48% of the total. In 2020, DRC sales at Sotheby’s reached $19.4 million. The estate with the next closest sales—Bordeaux’s Pétrus—accounted for just $4.2 million.

When pairing a dessert with a sweet wine, the dessert should be sweeter than the wine to enhance the latter’s flavor.

Answer: False.

The best dessert and dessert wine marriages are usually based on pairing a not-too-sweet dessert with a sweeter wine. Desserts that are sweeter than the wine they accompany can make the wine taste blank and dull. Essentially, the sweetness of the dessert knocks out the character of the wine. Super-sweet wedding cake, for example, will diminish anything in a glass. But something like a not-very-sweet fruit or nut tart enhances the complexities and nuances of the sweeter wines around them.

“The inseparable connection in southern France between wine, food, and the earth reminds me that wine is a gift from God. In a visceral sense, drinking Châteauneuf-du-Pape and eating local sausages becomes a way of transcending time, of experiencing that which, though it may seem temporal, is, in fact, timeless.”

—Steve Edmunds
Co-owner, Edmunds St. John Winery, which specializes in Rhône-style wines made in California

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