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The 15 Best Sweet Wines for 2025

Sweet wines are some of the world’s most historic expressions of wine. Tokaji, Pantelleria, Vin Santo: These were the wines that survived long ocean voyages around the ancient world through and beyond the Middle Ages.

Today, there’s an exciting array of different styles made from a plethora of varieties all over the world. Some are made within strict traditional rules while some push the envelope of modern winemaking. While these wines don’t get as much acclaim as they did a few centuries back, they still deserve a place on the table. They can provide a beautiful pairing for your next dinner party’s cheese course or dessert spread. Or you can skip the hours of baking pies and cakes and just pop a bottle of sweet wine to enjoy on its own.

Here are the 15 best sweet wines for 2025.

Why You Should Trust VinePair

Throughout the year, VinePair conducts dozens of tastings for our Buy This Booze product roundups, highlighting the best bottles across the world’s most popular wine and spirits categories.

As part of this work, VinePair’s tasting and editorial staff samples thousands of bottles every year. This helps us keep a finger on the pulse of what’s new and exciting. It also provides us with the crucial context needed to distinguish the simply good from the truly great — whether from a quality or value-for-money perspective, or both.

VinePair’s mission is to offer a clear, reliable source of information for drinkers, providing an overview applicable to day-to-day buying and drinking.

Learn more about VinePair’s tastings and reviews department here.

How We Taste

We believe in tasting all products as our readers typically would: with full knowledge of the producer and — importantly — price. Our tastings are therefore not conducted blind.

VinePair’s tasting panel evaluates every wine on its aromas, flavors, structure, balance, and quality. We also consider whether or not the wine showed typicity for its specific grape or region.

How We Compiled This List

In order to provide our readers with the most comprehensive and thoroughly tested list of the best sweet wines to buy, VinePair invited producers, distributors, and PR firms working on their behalf to send samples for consideration. These bottles were submitted free of charge — producers didn’t pay to submit nor did VinePair pay for the products. All were requested with the clear understanding that submission does not guarantee inclusion in the final list.

For the sparkling wine roundup, we assigned a score to each product on a 100-point scale based upon the quality and intensity of its aromas, flavors, texture, and finish. Then we reviewed all scores and compiled an editorially driven list that meets our criteria of 15 best sweet wines to buy right now. Each wine was assessed on quality, price, and availability to compile the final list.

The Best Value Sweet Wine

Cline Family Cellars Late Harvest Mourvèdre 2021

Contra Costa is a wine region just outside of San Francisco that’s losing more and more ground each year to urban development. Some of the vineyards here are upwards of 100 years old, and the Cline family is doing what it can to keep this historic wine zone around.

While this isn’t the cheapest sweet wine on the market, a bottle with this kind of history is a value in and of itself. This wine is made with Mourvèdre grapes sourced from the Bridgehead Vineyard, which was planted in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This area is dry farmed and benefits from the winds that blow through Contra Costa County. The grapes are picked when they are ultra-ripe, late in the harvest, resulting in a wine with great depth.

It has a concentrated nose with dried red fruit and a slight hint of herbs that carries to the palate. The mouthfeel is balanced with great acidity that protects the wine from being too cloying. Do yourself a favor and find this delicious wine, grab some of the most artisanal cheese you can find and make a dessert spread. Or just sip and savor it on its own. It’s that good.

Average price: $32
Rating: 93

The Best Splurge Sweet Wine

Livio Felluga Picolit 2017

Picolit, a grape native to Italy’s northeastern Friuli region, is named for its inability to fully pollinate, forming only small (piccolo) bunches of concentrated white grapes. So these grapes are designated to only passito-style sweet wines. Wines made from Picolit are considered “vino da meditazione,” wines not for food, but to drink and contemplate due to their complexity. This wine is only made in the best years. The conditions have to be just right so that the grapes can ripen with enough material to make this gem of a dessert wine.

Livio Felluga knows how to coax out this complexity. This wine has a subtle nose with hints of caramel and lemon oil. The palate is soft and viscous with just the right amount of acidity. The balance is amazing.

Average price: $125
Rating: 94

The Best of the Rest:

Best Sweet Wines Under $50

Ceretto I Vignaioli di Santo Stefano Moscato d’Asti 2022

Vignaioli di Santo Stefano Belbo was founded in 1976 by a group of winemakers who felt that the beloved Moscato wine from Asti was becoming too commercialized. They decided to band together to craft wines that prioritized quality. This project is now in its third generation and continues to strive to make the best wine possible, implementing strategies like organic agriculture and lowering yields. This wine exemplifies their goals. The nose has inviting floral aromas with pops of orange blossom and honeysuckle. The palate is well balanced with delicate bubbles and a nice harmony between sugar and acidity.

Average price: $22
Rating: 92

Rodica Yellow Muscat 2021

In Slovenian Istria, overlooking the Gulf of Trieste, the Rodica family organically farms 37 acres of native varieties like this Yellow Muscat. One of the oldest families of grapes on the planet, Muscat comes in many forms, with expressions that range from dry to sweet and everything in between. This example finds the perfect middle ground, with a beeswax-like sweetness impeccably balanced by active natural acidity. The nose is beautifully aromatic, with notes of minerals, honey, and potpourri. The palate is bursting with juicy peach flavors and subtle flecks of white pepper.

Average price: $25
Rating: 94

Lamoreaux Landing Riesling Ice 2022

Lamoreaux Landing has been farming grapes on the east side of Seneca Lake for three generations. This isn’t only Riesling country — it’s ice wine country. And ice wine made from the Riesling grape? Yes, please. This wine has wonderful pear and honey aromas with a hint of orange peel. The palate is well balanced with plentiful acidity and harmonious fruit that fills the senses.

Average price: $38
Rating: 91

Barboursville Vineyards Paxxito 2019

This historic Virginia estate is calling back to America’s wine history with this sweet wine, a style that was very popular around the founding of the U.S. A blend of the aromatic Muscat Ottonel and Vidal Blanc grapes, the nose wafts with notes of acacia wood and honey. The palate is rich with ripe and dried fruit notes balanced by good acidity.

Average price: $40
Rating: 91

Donnafugata Ben Ryé 2022

Sicily has a deep history with sweet wine. For centuries dessert wines from the island were celebrated across the Mediterranean, and still are today. This bottle made with the Muscat of Alexandria grape — known locally as Zibibbo — on the island of Pantelleria just off the northern coast of Sicily is a reflection of this legacy. It has a nose of butterscotch, apricots, and roasted pears. The palate is rich with notes of honey and tropical fruit, with a wonderful active acidity that keeps the wine refreshing.

Average price: $47
Rating: 93

Best Sweet Wines Under $100

Paumanok Late Harvest Riesling 2022

While the Finger Lakes region upstate is better known for its Riesling expressions, this late-harvest bottling from Paumonok is so balanced it shows great potential for the grape in Long Island as well. The nose is subtle with some hints of pear and caramel. The palate and mouthfeel are just right. Rich fruit with a grippy edge and great acidity lifting the wine on the palate.

Average price: $50
Rating: 93

Sheldrake Point Riesling Ice Wine 2020

Ice wine is difficult to produce and can only be made in very specific conditions, but Sheldrake Point makes a stunner. This bottling, made with Riesling, has a pronounced nose with notes of white pepper, agave, stone fruit, and some ginger. It’s well balanced on the palate with creamy viscosity and brilliant acidity.

Average price: $60
Rating: 93

Kiona Vineyards Estate Red Mountain Chenin Blanc Ice Wine 2022

Kiona Vineyards was the first winery to plant vines in the Red Mountain district of Washington’s Columbia Valley. The estate has been working with Chenin Blanc for years and this wine shows just how much they love this variety. It’s an extremely vibrant and refreshing wine. The nose offers Chenin’s classic orchard fruit characteristics with ripe pears and caramel apple notes. The palate comes through with the grape’s signature blazing acidity.

Average price: $65
Rating: 92

Materra Cunat Family Vineyards Amabie Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc 2022

The Cunat family sets a standard here for late-harvest Sauvignon Blanc from California. Not many winemakers can coax this extremely expressive variety into a dessert style, but this wine hits the nail on the head. It has the grape’s signature green pepper aromas, but coated with a dollop of honey. The palate is all about texture with a viscous mouthfeel lifted by nice acidity.

Average price: $68
Rating: 90

Royal Tokaji Red Label 5 Puttonyos 2017

Situated along the southern slopes of the Zemplén Mountains, the Tokaj wine zone was realized in the 17th century when, as the story goes, there was a delay in harvest due to threat of enemy invasion. The late harvest led to wines with an intense concentration of sugars, making this a premiere region for sweet wine production. This expression from Royal Tokaji has a nose of brûléed pears, apricots, caramel, and a hint of ginger. The palate is extremely balanced with a medium weight and a welcome viscosity.

Average price: $72
Rating: 94

Castello di Volpaia Vinsanto del Chianti Classico 2019

There are a lot of Vin Santo wines out there, so it’s hard to find those that have just the right balance. This expression from Castello di Volpaia will set a standard going forward. It has a welcome combination of caramel and butterscotch aromas on the nose. The natural acidity gives balance to the mouthfeel. It’s a weighty wine, but with some cheese it will shine.

Average price: $87
Rating: 90

Inniskillin Sparkling Icewine 2022

Vidal is one of the Northeast’s most popular hybrid grapes. It’s quite hardy in the winter months, which is why it also thrives on the Niagara peninsula just over the New York border in Canada. Inniskillin was the first estate winery founded in Canada post-Prohibition, in 1975. This ice wine from the revered grape is not only delicious but bubbly! It’s bright and inviting with ripe fruit on the nose and hints of white pepper. The sweetness on the palate is balanced by lively bubbles that rise through the viscosity.

Average price: $94
Rating: 90

Lenkey Pincészet Tokaji Aszú 6 Puttonyos 2000

In Hungary, the wines used to follow a scale of sweetness based on “Puttonyos,” originally named for the number of baskets of noble rot grapes added to a barrel of wine. Today, the measurement is done in the more conventional unit of grams, but it’s fun to come across the old terminology with aged bottles like this. These wines can age for centuries due to their high levels of sugar and acid, and this one is just getting started at about 25 years old. On the nose you get beautiful notes of salted caramel, white pepper, and citrus zest. Flavors of caramelized fruit add complexity.

Average price: $96
Rating: 95

FAQs

How is sweet wine made?

There are several different techniques that can be used to make sweet wine. Wines can be made sweet from harvesting the grape later in the growing season to let them accumulate more sugars (these are known as late-harvest wines), harvesting the grapes when they’re frozen (these are known as ice wines), or by selecting grapes that have been affected by botrytis, a fungus also known as “noble rot” that concentrates sugars in the grape. Further explanation can be found here.

Where do sweet wines come from?

Sweet wines can be made in any region, but they are common in cooler-climate regions like Germany, New York, and Canada. Some of the world’s most famous sweet wines also come from Hungary and France’s Bordeaux. There are also great dessert wines coming out of Italy, where grapes can be dried using the passito method to retain sweetness.

Why are sweet wines so expensive?

Sweet wines can get pretty pricey, but that’s usually because they are so rare. The grapes used to make these wines are usually specially selected due to certain growing conditions or need to go through a time-consuming winemaking method, so there’s a limited amount of these wines produced.

*Image retrieved from Pixel-Shot via stock.adobe.com

The article The 15 Best Sweet Wines for 2025 appeared first on VinePair.

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