Source: Doraemon TB who loves to travel
As a wine lover, you must know that wine has a dry type and a sweet type, and "dry" means not sweet here. The dry wines mentioned in this article today may subvert your understanding of dry white and dry red wines.
What is a dry wine?
The figure is divided from dry to sweet, subject to EU wine standards
First, we need to know a term – Residual Sugar (RS). We know that during fermentation, yeast converts sugar into alcohol. After fermentation is completed, the remaining sugar in the finished wine that has not been converted into alcohol by yeast is the remaining sugar. It is generally expressed in terms of how many grams of sugar (g/L) are contained in each liter of wine.
Here, it should be noted that the classification of wines from dry to sweet is not a uniform standard all over the world, and it varies slightly from country to country. In the United States, for example, they sometimes refer to wines with a remaining sugar content of 10g/L as dry wine.
The EU Regulation 753/2002 describes it as follows: "Dry wine: Maximum of 4g/l, or 9g/l where the total acidity content is not more than 2g/l below the residual sugar content." Dry wines are wines with a maximum sugar content of 9 g/L when the total sugar (in terms of tartaric acid) is not less than 2 g/l of total sugar (in terms of glucose).
The same is true of the definition of dry wine in the "International Code of OENOLOGICAL PRACTICES" issued by the International Grape and Wine Organization in 2011. Therefore, there are two cases of dry wine: one is that the remaining sugar content does not exceed 4g/L (regardless of the amount of total acid and total sugar in the wine, and regardless of the difference between the two); the other is that when the difference between the total acid and the total sugar in the wine does not exceed 2g/L, the remaining sugar content can be up to 9g/L.
This fully illustrates that there are several common categories we have:
Dry type: the remaining sugar content does not exceed 4g/L;
Semi-dry type: the remaining sugar content is 4-12g/L;
Semi-sweet type: residual sugar content 12-45g/L;
Sweet type: the remaining sugar content is not less than 45g/L;
Why do some dry wines taste sweet?
Suppose you buy a Bottle of Gewürztraminer and the salesperson tells you that it is 100% dry wine, but when you drink it, you find that it is sweet, what the hell is going on?
(1) The influence of wine aroma
This is because the aroma of the wine affects our judgment of whether the wine is dry or sweet. For example, if you sniff a fully ripe wine and smell the aromas of black berries and banana yogurt, you subconsciously associate those aromas with your familiar desserts and transmit those aromas to the nerves of the brain, even if you haven't drunk the wine yet, but you subconsciously think the wine is sweet.
(2) The influence of taste perception
Our taste buds' perception of the sweetness of a wine is influenced by the structural makeup of the wine. When the acidity and bitterness in the wine increase, it can mask the sweetness of the wine. It's like lemonade, you don't like the sour lemon juice, you will add a little sugar to form a sweet and sour lemonade, cover up the sharp acid, the taste is much better.
In fact, many dry wines with high acidity, such as Dry German Riesling and Dry Furmint, contain a higher proportion of residual sugar to balance the sourness in the wine, but it doesn't taste sweet either. You can do a small experiment, add a certain amount of white sugar to the wine, until the sugar is fully dissolved into two cups, one cup adds a little lemon juice, the other cup does not add, and finally you will find that the glass with lemon juice is not very sweet, and the cup without lemon juice is particularly sweet.
How to identify sweetness in dry wines?
The sweetness in dry wines is subtle. To discern the subtle sweetness, you must first form a system in your mind about the flavors (especially sweetness) of the various dry wines you have drunk. For example, most Brut sparkling wines have residual sugars of up to 12g/L or more, but because of their extremely high acidity, the sweetness is less pronounced, only medium, not as thick as the sweetness of candy. To balance out its aggressive sourness, sparkling wines are often artificially added with sugar to suit most people's tastes.
Why isn't the label labeled with sweetness?
Wine is not a food, it is only a beverage, and it is not required to indicate specific nutrients including sweetness. So, how sweet is this wine? Polyacid? What are the calories per bottle of wine? We don't know these properties until we drink alcohol. But many high-quality wines can find technical information on their official websites, and consumers must learn to find information on the official websites of wines.