When asked, most people will say that they prefer dry wines to sweet wines, which helps explain why dry wines outsell their sweeter counterparts by a factor of ten.
Palate sensitivity can vary from person to person, and we all tend to lose taste buds as we age, so it is quite common for your humble narrator and his drinking companion du jour to come to different conclusions, even when sharing the same bottle of wine.
As a general rule, the sweetness of a wine refers to the amount of residual sugars left in the wine after fermentation, although other factors such as acidity, tannins and fruit ripeness can affect the perception of sweetness on the tongue.
Dry wines are generally considered to have less than 4 grams of sugar per litre, while off-dry can have up to 12 grams per litre. Medium wines are up to 45 grams per litre, and sweet wines have more than 45 grams of sugar per litre.
However, despite most wine drinkers claiming to prefer dry wines, the biggest chunk of the wine sold in retail stores and restaurants is actually for off-dry wines, with sugar content in the 4-12 grams per litre range.
The specific sugar levels tend to wax and wane with the vagaries of the market. Readers who are old enough to remember those cheesy Hochtaler wine commercials from the early 80’s will recall the days of cheap and cloying sweet wines that the boozing public started turning away from in the 90’s towards the dry and off-dry styles that are most popular today.
Winemakers have many tricks at their disposal to adjust the sugar content of wines, most of which go back centuries.
The simplest method of increasing the sugar content in a wine is to simply add a pinch of sugar after fermentation, which lets the winemaker precisely control the final sweetness of the wine. However, many countries have strict regulations on such vulgar additions to fine wines, so this method tends to be used on the value-priced Apothic Reds of the world, rather than the pedigreed wines.
The ancient Romans would sweeten their wines by harvesting as late in the season as possible, as the ripest fruit would contain more sugar, which made for a sweeter wine.
The ancient Greeks preferred a crisper wine, so their strategy was to harvest the grapes early in the season while they were still fairly acidic, but then let the plucked grapes dry in the sun for several days to shrivel up, which concentrated the amount of sugar left in each grape.
In more modern times, a wine could be sweetened by submersing the barrels in freezing water, which stopped the fermentation process early by killing off the yeast, thereby leaving unfermented sugars still in the wine.
This method of halting the fermentation process is the most commonly used today, especially in countries that have a long history of preferring sweeter wines.
Canada’s claim to fame on the world wine stage is our production of ice wine, usually made from Riesling grapes. Winemakers in the Niagara and Okanagan regions will carefully study the weather forecasts near the end of the fall harvest, and may decide to leave a portion of the grape crop on the vine.
If the weather gods smile on the vineyards, there will be a hard frost before the grapes have rotted on the vines. When the grapes are frozen at -10 to -13°C, they are quickly picked by hand, and pressed while they are still frozen, with each grape giving up a single drop of intensely sweet liquid, which is then processed into ice wine. This produces an intensely sweet wine, which is very expensive due to the low yields.
It was the Germans who accidentally invented ice wine back in 1794, when an early cold snap froze all the grapes on the vine, but Canada is considered a close second on the world markets.
Sweeter wines tend to be consumed after a meal, often as a digestif or accompanying a rich dessert. Some of the more popular types of sweet wines include ice wine from Germany or Canada, Sauternes from France, Tokaji from Hungary, and Muscat from Italy.
With the holiday season soon approaching, there will be many family dinners to attend, so consider picking up a bottle of sweet wine to enjoy with dessert!
