What wine goes with cheesecake?
Moscato d’Asti
Grappi pairing score: how well the match works, on a 100-point scale. Grappi's own assessment.
The best wines for cheesecake
Moscato d’Asti
Sweet sparkling
Light, low in alcohol and gently fizzy, its peachy sweetness lifts the dense, creamy filling instead of weighing it down.
Late-harvest Riesling
Sweet white
Honeyed but high in acidity, it matches the sugar while cutting the richness of the cream cheese.
Sauternes
Dessert
Botrytised and luxuriously sweet, a special-occasion match with apricot and honey notes for a plain or fruit-topped cheesecake.
Why it works
Cheesecake is dense, rich and sweet, which is exactly why a dry wine fails beside it: the sugar in the dessert makes the wine taste sour and thin. The fix is simple, make sure the glass is at least as sweet as the plate. From there, acidity is your friend, because it stops the pairing feeling cloying and refreshes the palate against all that cream cheese. The topping then fine-tunes the choice: berries love a sweet sparkling red, chocolate wants a fortified red, and a plain cheesecake is happiest with a light, fizzy Moscato.
Grappi scores every pairing out of 100 against a reference of 185,000 wines. Cheesecake with Moscato d’Asti rates 90.
Serving tips
- Keep the alcohol low and the bubbles light: a frothy Moscato d’Asti refreshes the rich filling far better than a heavy, high-alcohol dessert wine.
- Pair to the topping, not just the cake: a strawberry cheesecake loves a sweet sparkling red like Brachetto, a chocolate one wants Ruby Port.
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