Sweetness and Alcohol Levels

[BostonGirl]

Hello -
I am trying to learn how to pick a wine from reading the labels (I like Reislings) and I know I read somewhere that the sweetness of the wine depends on the alcohol level. Is that right? But what I can't remember is if it said the higher the alcohol level, the sweeter the wine or vice versa. Can someone help me, please? Thank you!

[Thomas]

Bostongirl, the higher the alcohol, the sweeter the grapes were at ripening, but not the sweeter the wine.

Lower alcohol interprets into potentially sweeter wine, since the alcohol in wine is created by yeast eating sugar. If the yeast are allowed to eat all the sugar, the wine is not sweet; if the yeast eat some of the sugar, the wine is as sweet as the sugar that remains.

Alcohol being fermented sugar, high alcohol wines might taste sweet even when they are dry.

[BostonGirl]

Thank you for responding! So is there a medium point to measure the sweetness against the alcohol content? I thought I read, again I can't remember, but I thought I read that 7.0 or 9.0 was the medium range?

[Thomas]

If a table wine is between 7 and 9 percent alcohol it likely will have some sweetness.
Unless it is a fortified wine like Port, Madeira, et al, a wine below 12 percent alcohol GENERALLY will have residual sweetness.

[toddabod]

If you are talking Riesling, ask the wine person what the grams per litre of sugar the wine has. A dry riesling will have up to 9 grams of sugar per liter, a sweeter one will have up to 18-20 grams per liter and if you want the sweetest ones go for anything over that. Some Eiswein's have an ungodly amount of sugar, which makes them good dessert wines. I have tried some with 40 grams per litre and it was like drinking grape juice.