Vin Santo substitutes

The closest widely available bottle and the first thing to reach for. If you only have dry Marsala, add half a teaspoon of sugar per quarter cup.

Best for

zabaglione, biscotti dipping, pan sauces, poached fruit, tiramisu variations, cakes

Shares the barrel-aged, nutty, slightly oxidised character that gives Vin Santo its depth, and lands very close in sweetness. It is a shade more raisiny and a shade less acidic, so a dessert made with it tastes plusher and less refreshing on the finish, and a pan sauce reduces a little sweeter. A squeeze of lemon restores the lift.

Aged in wood in contact with air, which produces exactly the nutty, dried-fruit, caramelised character Vin Santo has.

Best for

biscotti dipping, poached pears or figs, chocolate desserts, pan sauces for duck or pork, cheese

Nuttier and noticeably richer than Vin Santo, with red-fruit and fig notes and more residual sugar, so a zabaglione made with it comes out plumper, darker in colour and heavier on the palate. It also has more alcoholic heat. Cut any other sugar in the recipe slightly. Ruby Port is a poorer match, being fresher, fruitier and not oxidised.

The best choice for savoury and pan-sauce uses. Madeira is deliberately heated during ageing, which gives it a baked, nutty, caramelised profile with unusually sharp acidity.

Best for

pan sauces, reductions, mushroom dishes, cakes and puddings, with cheese

Very close to Vin Santo on the nut-and-caramel axis, and its bracing acidity actually makes it better than Marsala for anything that will be reduced, since the sauce stays lively rather than going syrupy and flat. Bual and Malmsey are the sweeter styles; Sercial and Verdelho are drier and will need a little sugar. Slightly more savoury and less honeyed than Vin Santo overall.

Spanish oxidised wines, which share Vin Santo's mechanism of ageing in contact with air. Oloroso plus a teaspoon of sugar per quarter cup is the closest of the three.

Best for

poached fruit, pan sauces, cakes, ice cream, with hard cheese

Pedro Ximenez is dramatically sweeter and almost syrupy, a raisin and molasses concentrate, so use two thirds the amount and cut sugar elsewhere or the dessert becomes cloying. Cream sherry sits closer in sweetness but is simpler and slightly caramel-flat next to Vin Santo. All three tilt the flavour toward Spanish raisin and walnut rather than Tuscan apricot and honey.

Other dessert wines, and the right choice if what you actually want is a glass to drink with the biscotti rather than an ingredient.

Best for

drinking with dessert, poached fruit, fruit-forward cakes, sabayon

All are sweet and high in acid but none are oxidised, so they taste bright, floral and stone-fruity where Vin Santo tastes nutty and aged. In a pan sauce this shows up immediately: the reduction is fresh and perfumed rather than deep and toasty. Passito di Pantelleria and Recioto di Soave, both made from dried grapes, are the closest of this group because the appassimento step matches.

The best alcohol-free option, and better than it sounds. Soak two tablespoons of golden raisins in a quarter cup of hot water for twenty minutes, strain, then add lemon juice and a pinch of salt.

Best for

cakes, biscotti, poached fruit, soaking dried fruit, syrups

Dried grapes are literally what Vin Santo is made from, so this captures the honeyed raisin note that no juice can. What it cannot supply is the barrel-aged nuttiness or the alcohol, so the result is sweeter, simpler and slightly one-dimensional, and it will not keep a syrup or soaked fruit as long as wine does. A drop of almond extract adds back a hint of the nut character.

The pantry version of the above. The tea contributes tannin and a touch of the barrel-like astringency that plain juice lacks.

Best for

baking, cakes, soaked sponges, poached fruit, glazes

Works genuinely well in baking, where sugar and acidity are what the recipe wanted from the wine. It falls apart as a drinking substitute, since it tastes of grape juice and tea rather than of an aged dessert wine. Do not skip the lemon and the pinch of salt; without them the mixture is flatly sweet and makes the whole dessert taste dull.