Dry or Sweet

[Wine-is-above-me]

I was wondering about telling the difference between a dry or a sweet wine. I know nothing about wine, obviously I can tell if a wine is dry when I drink but are there names that I should look for when buying to tell the difference between dry or sweet?
Paisano, Burgundy, Merlot, Chianti are these dry or sweet?
Help Me.

[Innkeeper]

Hi Wine-is-above-me and welcome to the Wine Board. Paisano is sweet, Merlot is dry, Chianti is dry, and it depends on what you mean by Burgundy. Are you talking about red plonk from California (seen less and less thankfully) it is usually somewhat sweet. If you mean French Burgundy made from Pinot Noir grapes, it is usually dry.

Sweet wine usually tastes that way. Dry wine is more of a misnomer. It can be very fruity giving an appearance of sweetness, or it can simply lack sweetness. A wine is dry if all the sugar in it has been fermented into alcohol.

[wineguruchgo]

When wine is made yeast is added to the grapes and it eat the natural sugar. The by-product is alcohol and carbon dioxide (bubbles). The more sugar the yeast eats (leaving less in the bottle) the higher the alcohol level. The less sugar it eats (leaving more in the bottle) the less alcohol it will produce. Kind of like a see-saw.

So, when you look at a bottle of wine you can get a general idea of how much sugar is in the wine by looking at the alcohol percentage.

A wine with 12% alcohol is going to have a lot more residual sugar than a wine with 15% alcohol.

This is a massive generalization, but for the most part it works. You may find one or two exceptions out there.

Hope that helps!

Please let me know if I have confused you.

[Thomas]

Guru,

That is quite a generalization. For example, the 12% wine could have begun at around 22 brix, which essentially means it fermented to near complete "dry-ness" (no wine is ever completely sugar free).

Many California 15% and above wines are suspected of having a lot of sugar still in them--especially the wines that begin near 30 brix and are fermented by so-called native yeasts.

[Wine-is-above-me]

Well thank you every one. After my next trip to the store I will be back with some more questions - so be ready to help [img]http://wines.com/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
Thanks again.
Oh here is a question - My husband has not yet aquired the taste for dry wines (or atleast the one we bought) I was reading that a German Riesling (hope that is right) is a good thing to start with to get into dry wines, would that be accurate?

[Thomas]

Yes, but make sure he does not get a Riesling that is called "Trocken" on the label. And if you can find one, get a Finger Lakes NY Semi-dry Riesling.