South African dessert wines: the ones we would pick

A fortified Hanepoot for the cheeseboard

Hanepoot is South Africa's own name for Muscat of Alexandria, and nothing else smells quite like it. The Wildflower Hanepoot Jeripigo from Darling Cellars is 100 per cent Hanepoot grown as unirrigated bush vines in weathered granite, where the roots have to dig for their own moisture and the cold Benguela Current sends sea air inland from the Atlantic a few kilometres west.

That combination is why it works. The grapes ripen to a fragrant concentration, then the juice is fortified with wine spirit at the right moment, locking in the natural sugar before fermentation can eat it. Lively acidity runs underneath the richness, so it reads as bright rather than syrupy.

This is a cold-night wine and a cheeseboard wine: blue cheese with honey and walnuts, or mature Cheddar and quince paste. It is also one of the few things that will cheerfully sit beside a fragrant, spicy chicken curry. The sugar and the spirit make it stable, so an opened evening need not be a rushed one, and a stored bottle slowly drifts towards marmalade and dried apricot.

The sweet white that can handle a curry

Not every sweet wine is for pudding. Four Cousins Natural Sweet White is a blend of white grapes with a touch of unfermented grape juice held back, fermentation stopped while natural sugars remain, which is what preserves that just-picked perfume of honeysuckle and apricot. No oak, low alcohol, soft finish.

What stops it tasting like cordial is Robertson's limestone, which holds moisture through hot, dry summers and gives the white grapes grown there a lifted, almost mineral edge. Sweetness without freshness is cloying. This has the freshness.

Serve it properly cold, around 8 degrees, with a Thai green curry and jasmine rice, or sticky chilli prawns. It also does the classic sweet-against-salt trick with Stilton and honeycomb, and it is lovely with a lemon tart. Buy it for a mixed group where somebody drinks dry, somebody drinks sweet, and somebody has ordered the hottest thing on the menu.

Food pairing for Four Cousins Natural Sweet White, Thai green curry with jasmine rice

And the pink one, for friends who say they don't like wine

Four Cousins Natural Sweet Rosé is unwooded and fermented cool, with the fermentation stopped early to keep a gentle, juicy sweetness and that Muscat perfume intact. Strawberry and cherry, soft texture, nothing to decode. It sits somewhere between a light dessert wine and a sipper, which makes it unexpectedly handy.

It came out of a straightforward idea: the third generation of the Retief family at Van Loveren launched the Four Cousins range, and those natural sweet styles went on to become some of the best-selling wines in South Africa, pulling in drinkers who had never bought Cape wine before.

Drink this one young, while the perfume is in full song rather than fading. Chill it to 8 degrees for a Cape Malay chicken curry with yellow rice, a strawberry pavlova, or a bowl of fruit salad with mint. It is the bottle to take to a Bonfire Night gathering, and the label any homesick South African will clock from across the room.

Small glasses, cold bottles, and pudding alongside

Temperature does most of the work with sweet wine. Too warm and the sugar sprawls; properly chilled and the acidity steps forward, which is why the Four Cousins pair want 8 degrees and the straw wine shows best nearer 10.

Pour less than you would for a dry white. A 750 ml bottle of something this concentrated stretches across a whole table of small glasses, and half a glass of straw wine beside a tart of apricot frangipane is a better experience than a full one.

One last habit worth picking up: serve the wine alongside the pudding, not after it. Match the sweetness roughly to the dish, or go the other way and put it against something salty, and you will understand in one mouthful why the Cape takes this category seriously.

If you're curious about where sweet Cape wine goes next, the straw wine and the Hanepoot are the two that reward the slowest sipping, and the Four Cousins bottles are the ones that get opened on a Tuesday. All of them sit within the full range if you fancy building a mixed case around a cheeseboard.