Dessert Wines come in many colors and styles and range from syrupy sweet to delicately so, still or sparkling, red or white. There are certain grape varieties, such as Muscat or Gewurztraminer, that lend themselves brilliantly to the production of sweet wines. Dessert wines can be loosely divided into two types: those that are fortified and those that are not.

Other dessert wines are made without addition of spirit, but gain their final sweetness in a number of other ways, but most of these methods involve concentrating the juice and sugar of the grape. Some grapes intended for dessert wines are allowed to be affected by Botrytis, or noble rot, while others are allowed to freeze on the vine before the water in the grapes – as ice – is removed, leaving a greater concentration of sugar in the fermentation must.