
Many wines have different levels of sweetness due to the presence of: You can also enjoy sweet wine as a dessert in itself and savor every last drop. Port varieties are an excellent accompaniment for fine cheese. However, when pairing sweet wine with your food, you should try to choose treats that are less sweet than the wine in order to enjoy it at its best.ĭishes to avoid are chocolate and toffee while medium sweetness fruits and biscuits are a perfect match.
Sweet wine is usually enjoyed after a meal, accompanying dessert. The grapes are harvested and pressed while frozen, and with the water content still in the form of ice, only the sugar oozes out, creating a perfectly sweet wine.
It may seem like rudimentary information that grapes need sunshine and warmth to produce great wine, but at the other end of the spectrum, Icewine produces some of the best sweet wines available. Far from destroying their winemaking potential, noble rot increases the sugar by reducing water levels and even adds highly desirable flavor notes such as honey and ginger. In the right conditions and geography, noble rot can occur when the mist falls on the grapes in the morning, encouraging grey rot to grow and shrivel the grapes. Fortified wines such as sherry involve the liquor being added once fermentation process is complete. By adding the liquor before, the additional alcohol kills the yeast and leaves higher levels of residual sugar in the wine as well as raising the alcohol level to around 20%. Many sweet wines are fortified, which means that a distilled liquor, often brandy, is added before, during or after the fermentation process. In the US, alcohol levels in sweet wines are 14% and above.īelow are a few production methods. While some winemakers are able to grow especially sweet grapes to produce sweet wine, many choose to add additional sugar either before or during the fermentation process, so that both sugar and alcohol levels remain high. Although some residual sugar is common, levels are usually fairly low. During standard fermentation, the yeast consumes sugar from the grapes and turns it into alcohol. To produce sweet wine, the fermentation process of the grape has to be changed. So to be classified as a sweet wine, it all comes down to sugar (see the table below). Some wines may taste sweet due to fruity and candy-like notes in the flavor. Sweet wine, also called dessert wine or sometimes pudding wine, is the opposite of dry wine, where the production method gives the bottle higher sugar levels.
You must first know what you’re looking for in the sweet wine before making a decision between sweetness level and type of wine. Red and white wines both have sweet wines that will give you the tasting experience you desire. In fact, it becomes increasingly difficult when you don’t fully understand the sweetness levels that sweet wines have. It’s quite hard to find a wine that meets your sweetness standards.