Although sweet wine can sometimes get a bad rap, some of the most prized, expensive, and traditional wines of the world are made in a sweet style. Port, Madeira, Icewine, Muscat, and Sauternes are just a few of the wines satisfying that sweet tooth in the wine world.
But how does a winemaker make a sweet wine sweet in the first place?
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1. Add alcohol to the wine before or during Fermentation
- Fermentation: Yeast + Sugar = CO2, Alcohol, and Heat.
- Yeast eats sugar in wine, turning it into alcohol. Usually winemakers let this process finish, meaning the yeast will have eaten all the sugar and thus you have a DRY wine!
- However, if you want some of that sugar to stay in the wine, the winemaker can choose to stop fermentation early by adding alcohol (a distilled spirit) to the mix. A high enough alcohol level will kill the remaining yeast cells, meaning there is nothing left to eat the sugar, so the sugar stays in the wine, making it SWEET. (This is also the reason fortified wine is on average around 18% alcohol, much higher than most dry wines).
Example: Port
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2. Add sugar to the wine AFTER fermentation
- This process is called Chaptalization and is forbidden in most wine regions, as it is thought of as "cheating" in a sense, since you are simply adding sugar to sweeten the wine.
- However, the famous wine region Champagne uses this method to determine the final sweetness levels of their fabulous sparkling wines! In a process called "dosage" sugar is often added to the wine after it's second fermentation. The amount that is added determines if it will be a Brut(dry), Demi-sec, or Doux(sweet) wine!
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4. Harvest the grapes late
- The longer the grapes sit on the vine, the riper they get. Many producers will purposefully let their grapes hang on the vine and harvest when they are overripe. This extra sugar content helps in the making of their sweet wine.
Examples: Riesling, Muscat, Pinot Gris, and Chenin Blanc from Alsace ("Vendage Tartive" = "Late Harvest" in French)
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3. Use Botrytis infected grapes
- The first time you hear of this process it can take you back a bit, but all it takes to get over your reservations is to try a botrytisized sweet wine in all it's luscious honeycomb greatness and you will learn to love this little fungus.
- Botrytis (AKA "noble rot") is actually a fungus that attacks certain grapes and causes them to shrivel up, losing it's water and causing all the sugar to be concentrated in this little grape.
- When wines with this rot are pressed and made into wine, they bring along all this wonderful natural sweetness to create some of the most prized (and expensive) dessert wines of the world.
Example: Sauternes, German beerenauslese and trockenbeerenauslese (typically Riesling), Tokaji Aszú, and Quarts de Chaume.
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4. Use Frozen Grapes
- In a similar fashion as Botrytis, frozen grapes concentrate the grape sugars. The sugar does not freeze and can be pressed (with much difficulty) to produce lovely Icewine or Eiswein (in German).
- Canada and Germany, with their frostier temperatures, are the primary sources of these lovely frozen grapes as they must be picked around temps of 18 degrees F.
Examples: Inniskillin Vidal Icewine (Canada), Grüner Veltliner Eiswein (Austria), Dr. Loosen Riesling Eiswein (Germany)
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5. Dry out the grapes
- If you are starting to see a trend, you are right! A lot of these methods have to do with ways to concentrate sugar within the grape and drying it out is no exception.
- This is one of the oldest methods known, where the winemaker either let's the grapes raisin on the stalk, or pick them and lay them out on straw mats to shrivel in the sun.
Examples: Vin Santo (Tuscany), Recioto della Valpolicella (Veneto), and sweet Sherries. Amarone uses this method, but ferments the wines to dryness, giving it a super ripe, raisiny texture.
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So... hope you can find a fun new sweet wine at a store (or online) near you, and have fun trying these delicious specialties! Let me know your favorite!
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