Different Wine for Muscat Jelly

Our answer

Nigella's Blackberries In Muscat Jelly (from Nigella Express and on the Nigella website) uses the sweet dessert wine Muscat de Beaumes De Venise as the wine itself has a sweet and fruity flavour that is perfect for a dessert and is a great contrast to the sharp fresh blackberries. It is sometimes labelled as moscatel but don't confuse the wine with muscadet, which is a dry white wine. There is also a Muscat de St Jean De Minervois which can be used instead of the Beaumes De Venise.

It is possible to substitute another sweet wine, however we would mention that this wine is the most reasonably priced of the main range of dessert wines. The closest alternative would be a sauternes which is another French dessert wine. Tokaji is a Hungarian sweet wine with quite a honey flavour. It is usually sweeter than muscat so you may need to reduce the amount of sugar used. Another alternative is "icewine" or ice wine which is made from grapes that are picked once the first frosts have arrived. These wines usually come from Germany (eiswein) or Canada. The sweetness of these wines can very so chill your bottle and taste it before making the jelly, to see if you need all of the sugar in the recipe. You may also like to consider Nigella's Slut Red Raspberries In Chardonnay Jelly (from Nigella Summer and on the Nigella website) as an alternative to the muscat jelly.