Wine professionals often talk about residual sugar in wine and it only occurred to us yesterday talking with friends that the average wine drinker is a little unclear about what this term actually means.
Wine is made from grapes that contain natural sugar in the fruit which is converted to alcohol during the fermentation process.
Depending upon the style of wine that the winemaker is trying to make, there may be some natural fruit sugar (fructose) left over in the final wine when it is bottled.
In quality winemaking this is natural sugar, not added sugar. The amount in a bottle of wine depends upon the wine style. We use the term ‘residual sugar’ because it’s the amount of sugar that ‘resides’ in the wine after the fermentation process has finished.
There is no residue in the wine, no sediment. Just natural sugar present in the wine.
We express residual sugar in grams per litre. A dry wine will typically have very little (maybe 1-3g per litre) whereas a luscious dessert wine may contain up to 200g per litre.
It takes just under 17g per litre of natural sugar to create one percent of alcohol so a dry wine at 12% alcohol will have had around 200g of natural sugar per litre in the juice when it was picked.
The picture is of a 1998 dessert wine from the Coteaux de l’Aubance appellation in Anjou. In order to mention the words ‘Selection de Grains Nobles’ on the label, a wine like this must have had no less than 323g of natural sugar present in the unfermented grape juice before picking!
It’s one of our favourite dessert wines and is made by top winemaker Christophe Daviau in Brissac just 15 minutes from where we used to live in Anjou. Chenin is particularly suited to making fine sweet wines as it has lovely natural acidity which balances the high levels of residual sugar.
No added sugar here. Just luscious ripe grapes left on the vine late in the season giving rich sweet unctuous juice that transforms itself into a delicious sweet wine that can age for decades.
