Muscat Ottonel

[Innkeeper]

Sweetness and dryness strictly speaking have little to do with whether the grape is sweet or not. It does not matter how much sugar is in the grape relative to how sweet the wine is. If all the sugar in the grape is fermented the wine is dry. If less than all the sugar is fermented, or if sugar in some form (usually unfermented juice of the same grape) is added back, then the wine will be off-dry or sweet to the extent the winemaker chooses and laws allow.

Having said all that Muscat (there are three distict varieties of it too) is sweeter than your average grape. Therefore, if all the suger is fermented it will will produce a wine of higher alcohol, than a grape that contained less sugar. If you followed all this so far, we can go further.

If the Muscat Wine you see has low alcohol, say around 10 or 11% there is an excellent chance that it is sweet. This is not an ironclad method, as the amount of sugar in any grape including Muscat is dependent on when the grape was harvested; that is how ripe it was at harvest.

With grapes like Muscat vinters sometime try to help you be putting the word dry on the label if it is. Others will think you will assume it to be off dry as most Muscats are. The only region I am aware of that always makes their table wines from Muscat dry is Alsace. I would guess that yours has some level of sweetness.

[This message has been edited by Innkeeper (edited 02-13-2005).]