In Part 1 we spoke about why sugar in Wine was important and how it gets there. This time we will explore Sugar a bit further.
Grapes are normally picked using a combination of Physiological and Sugar ripeness depending on the style of wine the winemaker is wine to produce. The longer the grapes are left on the vine generally the higher the sugar content. It is a balancing act as leaving grapes long enough to achieve Physiological ripeness may lead to higher Sugar levels than intended.
Once the grapes are picked and squeezed the juice goes through the fermentation process where the sugar in the grape juice is converted to alcohol by strains of Yeast. If the winemaker allows all or most of the sugar to be converted to alcohol then the wine is said to be Dry. Red wines are generally dry wines but white wines can have varying degrees of sweetness.
Wine makers may decide to stop the fermentation before all of the sugar has been converted leaving some of the sugar in the wine thus creating wines of varying degrees of sweetness, which are sometimes identified on the label by the grams of per litre of residual sugar. There are other techniques to boost the level of sugar in the grapes but we will address those another time.
So the next time you are looking for a sweeter wine consider how many grams of per litre of residual sugar it contains and try out different concentrations to see what you prefer. In the meantime…enjoy some wine.