Vidal icewine with feta and honey cheesecake

It’s always satisfying when a challenging food and wine hit it off and both cheesecake and icewine undoubtedly present their problems.

Cheesecake is super-rich which calls for an accompanying dessert wine with enough weight but also enough fresh acidity to balance it while icewine is so sweet it can easily feel like overkill to even try to eat anything with it.

We were determined to showcase Sarit’s incredibly delicious feta and honey cheesecake though at our Honey & Co wine club on Sunday so took a punt on a Pillitteri Vidal icewine from Canada from - surprise, surprise - Lidl as the other dessert wines we’d tried just tasted thin with it. And it was fantastic! Luscious but not cloying.

You really should make the cheesecake* which is in their first book Honey & Co: Food from the Middle East. And buy the icewine which is a bargainous £14.99.

A word of warning - I can’t guarantee that icewine will go with every cheesecake - I suspect it mightn't if it was a toffee cheesecake and probably not with a chocolate one either but you never know. You can see some of my other cheesecake pairings here - and on the Pillitteri website. (Incidentally they have icewine festivals in Canada. How fun does that sound?)

* the other dessert shown in the pic was a chocolate, orange and pecan slice which went brilliantly well with a Tokaji