Sweet vs. Fruity

[Lil Ryan]

I'm having trouble telling the difference between "sweet" and "fruity". I had some Pinot Grigio (which my friend described as fruity) and really enjoyed it. However, I opened two different bottles of White Zin and didn't like them at all. Which is considered "sweet", "fruity" or both?

Ryan

[Innkeeper]

The PG is fruity, and the WZ is both. Sometimes upfront fruit (that which you taste with your tongue tip and lips) gives an "illusion of sweetness." There are some wine writers who use the term sweet to describe the tastes of all sorts of fruity wines that are actually bone dry. Wines that really are sweet have what is called residual sugar (R.S.). This is suger in the grapes that did not get converted into alcohol. There are all sorts of wines around the world that contain R.S. In commonly found American Wines in addition to white zinfandel, riesling, chenin blanc, and gewutztraminer all can be dry to very sweet (heavy R.S.).



[This message has been edited by Innkeeper (edited 03-20-2001).]

[Bucko]

Sweet is also used to give the illusion of fruit. Winemakers will leave 0.4-0.5% residual sugar to a wine, not enough to really taste sweet for a lot of people, but makes a wine seem to have more fruit than it really does.

Bucko

[Botafogo]

Since we sell a LOT of aromatic whites that SMELL like honey, candied fruit, tropical flowers and even fancy bath soap but are BONE DRY (and amazing with Thai, Sicilian, Indian, Persian and other highly spiced cuisines), we spend a lot of time talking about this.

One thing we have to point out is that your entire sensory system is built on pattern recognition: you can read text even if half the letters are smudged or truncated, you can recognize a solarized or profile portrait of a celebrity with no problem and you can figure out a song from a mere tease of the melody.

This is a truly wonderful expression of the heights of cognitive evolution to which we (and maybe dolphins and even cuttlefish) have reached, BUT it can also be a two edged sword: back to wine, we sell an insanely concentrated bone dry Zebbibo (a clone of moscato from the island of Pantelleria near Tunisia) that smells like orange marmelade, molasses, honeysuckle blossoms and maybe Sophia Loren after a brisk jog and, since your feeble little cerebelum is CONDITIONED to associate these aromas with jam, candy, perfume and maybe even soap, it INTERPOLATES non-existent sweetness into its sensory report to your conciousness in the same way it tells you that you are seeing actual movement at the cinema instead of 24 still pictures per second.

Our friend Terry Thiese (an amazing importer of German and Austrian wines and Grower Champagnes) often pours the SAME Kabinett style Riesling from both its own (tall, slender and green = sweet in many peoples minds) and a Burgundy bottle like your average Chardonnay come in and asks tasters "Which one do you like better and why" and over half of them prefer the erzatz Chard and pronounce it "so much drier"!!!

So, in short, just because something TASTES like super ripe tripical fruits (because it contains the same chemical compounds that tickle the same receptors in your tongue) that doesn't mean it is also sweet (full of actual sugar) any more than Kenny G playing a soprano saxaphone makes his music Jazz.


Cheers and check out some Alsatian wines, Roberto

[This message has been edited by Botafogo (edited 03-20-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Botafogo (edited 03-20-2001).]

[Innkeeper]

Have never seen a better description of the "illusion of sweetness." Maybe we should e-mail it to Sophia.

[Botafogo]

Thanks, IK and thanks to Lil Ryan for giving me something to write about for our e-mail Hot List this morning....

As to la Sophia: Bella, Io ti amo!!!!!!

[Lil Ryan]

Had a glass of American Riesling the other night, per your recommendations. Is that both sweet and fruity?

Still trying to sharpen up my tastebuds. =)

[Innkeeper]

Fruity and probably sweet. As mentioned above riesling can be made along a continuum from dry to very sweet. There should be a clue on the label. If it is off dry frequently the amount or degree of R.S. is printed right on the label. If the wine is called Dry Riesling it usually is or close to being dry. If the wine is called Johannisberg Riesling it is off dry. If there is no clue what-so-ever, it is usually off dry. All this refers to American Riesling only. Rules for other countries vary.

[RAD]

Roberto, as a student and appreciator of the language--I spent far too long in grad school as a result--I'd just like to say that I loved your post!

RAD

[Botafogo]

Thanks RAD, I just got off the phone with a customer of ours who says he would have gotten an A in a class on sensory awareness in Shrink school if he had had that.....