Julie Harrison - Dry, Sweet or Medium

A few weeks ago we looked at alcohol levels in wine and talked about how wines can be dry, medium or sweet.   As I mentioned then, wines can be fermented to dryness or the fermentation can be halted at the level of residual sugar that the winemaker is after. Residual sugar is measured in grams/Litre.  A dry wine will have 0-5 g/L of residual sugar whereas a very sweet wine could have more than 65g/L of sugar, which translates to 12 teaspoons of sugar in one wine bottle.

You can make some broad generalisations about whether a wine is dry, medium or sweet by looking at the variety.  Some wines are usually made dry.  These include Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Syrah.  

Others vary in the level of sweetness, for example Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer and Riesling all of which can be made dry, medium or sweet.   A variety like Moscato is  usually sweet.   A wonderful example of a sweet wine is a French Sauterne which could have 130g/L of residual sugar.  Try one with a blue cheese, it is a match made in heaven!!

It is impossible to discuss wine sweetness by just looking at how much sugar is in the wine.  Other wine components can change the perceived sweetness of the wine.  The acidity of the wine will make a huge difference as to how “sweet” a wine might taste.   To understand about how sweetness and acidity work together Riesling is a good wine to look at.  Rieslings can be very, very sweet; for example a German Trockenbeerenauslese; or bone dry, tart and quite austere.  A dry Riesling with high acidity is the sort of wine that makes your mouth tingle and your cheeks suck in.  As Riesling is a high acid variety some winemakers will make a softer style of wine by leaving a reasonable amount of sugar to balance out the acidity; so even though the wine may be off-dry or even medium in terms of much sugar is in it, it doesn’t seem that sweet.  

Other wine components that can affect how “dry” a wine tastes are alcohol; high levels can make a wine seem sweeter, tannins; a wine high in tannin may seem dryer than a low tannin wine.  If you were to compare a Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir with the same residual sugar you would quite likely feel that the Pinot Noir was “sweeter” due its lower level of tannins and “fruitiness”.  Gewurztraminer can seem to be sweet when it may be fermented to dryness due to its intense floral character, low acidity and high alcohol.

So how do you tell if the wine you are buying is dry, medium or sweet.  It’s a safe bet that if it is Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc or a red it is dry (though there are always exceptions out there such as late harvest Sauvignon Blanc and the red Lambrusco).  With Riesling and Pinot Gris a quick read of the label may help.  Some wineries have a handy scale on the back of the bottle that indicates dryness.  Alcohol levels can give you a clue.  A high alcohol Riesling will probably be lower in sugar than a low alcohol Riesling.  Words such as off-dry, medium, lush, tell you that there is some sugar.  Late harvest, Late picked, Ice wine, Botrytised, all equal sweet. For sparkling wines Extra Brut and Brut are dry, demi sec and sec are sweeter and just to confuse the issue a sparkling wine labelled extra-dry will be slightly sweet!!