Dry or Sweet

[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.