Alcohol Percentage

[Kcwhippet]

Something we've noticed over the past few years is the tendency for winemakers to want their grapes delivered with greater and greater maturity. They're looking for more fruit expression and with that they're getting much higher Brix numbers. In order to ferment to dryness, they're using yeasts with higher alcohol resistance and, consequently, getting finished wines with much higher alcohol levels. Sometimes that works, sometimes not, but just consider that most wines were in the 12% to 13% range not too many years ago. Now, we're seeing wines up over 15% regularly, in fact Winoweenie posted on the 02 Rosenblum Monto Rosso Zin a few weeks ago and that one was at 16.6%!! As IK mentioned, some people don't like the "hot" taste you frequently get from high alcohol wines, and that can regarded as a flaw by some. Therefore, many of us like to see the alcohol levels so we can have some idea what to expect before we purchase these wines.