An Intro To Sweet Wine
June 27, 2009
Visiting the wine store for the first time can be stressful; all sorts of varying wines can be found. For someone new to wine and looking for a sweet dessert wine nine times out of ten, the labels won't indicate the level of sweetness, if any. How do you tell the difference between a sweet wine and a dry wine? Let's get going.
First off, let's talk about the difference between a sweet wine and a dry wine. A wine that does not have a lot of sugar is considered a dry wine. If you want to think of it in categories, it goes dry to off-dry to medium dry to medium to medium sweet to sweet. There's a code that describes all this and sometimes it is on the label but it's usually not. It runs from 0 to 30 with 30 being the sweetest.
The easiest way to find a sweet wine is to look for late-harvest wine section in a wine shop. These wines are syrupy and are why new wine drinkers are more likely to enjoy them over a dry wine like a Cabernet Sauvignon which new wine drinkers describe as too bitter. These dessert wines are most often Rieslings, Chenin Blancs, Semillons or Gewürztraminers.
To get a sweet wine you begin in the fermentation process where the sugars are converted to alcohol. Naturally the more sugars converted the more alcohol there's going to be which you can deduce to there being less sugar. Less sugar means a dryer wine. From this you can probably also see that sweet wines are typically low in alcohol.
With sweet riesling the wine maker will add alcohol to the wine to achieve a certain level of sweetness. This added sugar is called residual sugar. Some late-harvest wines are made this way. This way the added sugar balances the natural acidity of the wine.
Most dessert wines are made from grapes that are left on the vine to ripen well into maturity. This is one way to achieve a natural sweetness in the wine without adding residual sugar. These wines also will have less alcohol in them but will make high quality dessert wines. This is how most most dessert wines are made.
That's basically all there is to understanding sweet wine and the difference between dry and sweet. Good stuff to know about sweet wine for beginners.
First off, let's talk about the difference between a sweet wine and a dry wine. A wine that does not have a lot of sugar is considered a dry wine. If you want to think of it in categories, it goes dry to off-dry to medium dry to medium to medium sweet to sweet. There's a code that describes all this and sometimes it is on the label but it's usually not. It runs from 0 to 30 with 30 being the sweetest.
The easiest way to find a sweet wine is to look for late-harvest wine section in a wine shop. These wines are syrupy and are why new wine drinkers are more likely to enjoy them over a dry wine like a Cabernet Sauvignon which new wine drinkers describe as too bitter. These dessert wines are most often Rieslings, Chenin Blancs, Semillons or Gewürztraminers.
To get a sweet wine you begin in the fermentation process where the sugars are converted to alcohol. Naturally the more sugars converted the more alcohol there's going to be which you can deduce to there being less sugar. Less sugar means a dryer wine. From this you can probably also see that sweet wines are typically low in alcohol.
With sweet riesling the wine maker will add alcohol to the wine to achieve a certain level of sweetness. This added sugar is called residual sugar. Some late-harvest wines are made this way. This way the added sugar balances the natural acidity of the wine.
Most dessert wines are made from grapes that are left on the vine to ripen well into maturity. This is one way to achieve a natural sweetness in the wine without adding residual sugar. These wines also will have less alcohol in them but will make high quality dessert wines. This is how most most dessert wines are made.
That's basically all there is to understanding sweet wine and the difference between dry and sweet. Good stuff to know about sweet wine for beginners.
Posted by Jim Beasley. Posted In : Sweet Wine