What wine goes with tiramisu?
Pedro Ximénez Sherry
Grappi pairing score: how well the match works, on a 100-point scale. Grappi's own assessment.
The best wines for tiramisu
Pedro Ximénez Sherry
Dessert
Intensely sweet with raisin, espresso and toffee notes that echo the coffee and cocoa of the dessert almost note for note.
Marsala
Fortified
The fortified Sicilian wine that often flavours tiramisu itself, so it is a seamless, traditional match.
Vin Santo
Dessert
Tuscany’s nutty, honeyed sweet wine has the richness to meet the mascarpone and the dried-fruit depth for the cocoa.
Why it works
Tiramisu is a study in bittersweet: strong coffee and cocoa on one side, rich, creamy mascarpone and sugar on the other. A dry wine simply cannot keep up, because the sugar in the dessert strips it bare. The best matches are sweet, fortified or passito wines with their own coffee, caramel and dried-fruit notes, which meet the dessert flavour for flavour. Pedro Ximénez is almost uncanny here, while Marsala has the home advantage of already being in the recipe. For a lighter finish, a gently sparkling Moscato refreshes rather than doubles down.
Grappi scores every pairing out of 100 against a reference of 185,000 wines. Tiramisu with Pedro Ximénez rates 90.
Serving tips
- Echo the flavours already on the plate: a coffee-and-toffee wine like Pedro Ximénez or Marsala mirrors tiramisu instead of competing with it.
- If the dessert is very rich, a chilled, frothy Moscato d’Asti cuts through the mascarpone and keeps the pairing from feeling heavy.
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