You’ll often hear wine described as "dry," "off dry" or "sweet" and this is not too much to do with "sweet" flavours, but actually to do with the amount of sugar that is in the wine. A common misconception is that if a wine has ripe, juicy fruit flavours then it is a "sweet" wine. But, plenty of wines have these very ripe fruit characteristics and are absolutely "dry" wines. For example, strawberries are sweet, so picking up a flavour of strawberries makes us think that the wine is sweet, when in reality there could be very little sugar in the bottle.
Let's think about a Cabernet Sauvignon, the Poppy Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon, for example. We would expect to be picking up on flavours like cassis, blackcurrant and vanilla, which are sweet flavours, right? But other parts of the structure encourage us to consider this as a dry wine immediately. Most notably in red wines, there are various levels of “tannins”, which are complicated components from the stems, skins and seeds of the grapes. Many of these tannins bind to the proteins in your saliva and precipitate out, causing a drying sensation.
So, when it comes to white wine, these tannins play less of a defining role. It shouldn't be surprising that ripe fruit flavours like pineapple, mango and apricot, as well as other “sweet” associated flavours like marmalade and jam, can be found in dry white wines. It’s all about the structure, as wine isn’t only made of sugar!
These fruity flavour components come from the grapes themselves, and can be enhanced in the winemaking process. Other “sweet” flavours, like vanilla, can also come from winemaking, most notably from oak ageing.
Whilst there are nuances, in still (not sparkling) wine, you mainly only need to understand that “dry” wines are typically up to 3 grams of sugar per litre of wine (g/L) and “sweet” wines or “dessert wines” like Sauternes (around 150 g/L sugar) are on the higher side of sugar levels and are definitely sweet, with a syrupy texture. “Sweet” wine can reach insane sugar levels of up to 900 g/L with rare wines such as Tokaji Escenzia.
To make things additionally difficult for those beginning their wine journey, there are multiple levels of “sweet” categories for sparkling wines, due to their naturally higher levels of acidity. Higher acidity not only makes these wines super food friendly, but it also means that sugar can be very helpful to create balance in the wine and neither component is as easy to perceive individually. In order of most dry (“brut”) to sweet (”sec”), these are: “Brut nature” or “brut zero”, “extra brut”, “brut”, “extra dry”, “sec”, “demi-sec” and “doux”. We know, it's wild that the category “extra dry” is not the most dry!
Normally, if you’re looking for a sparkling wine you’ll find “brut” (meaning dry) or “extra brut” on the label, with the “brut nature” labelling also becoming more common, particularly with more artisanal producers. Dry, or “brut,” sparkling wines can have up to 12 g/L of sugar in it, so it's hard to know exactly how much sugar might be in there, hence the extra categories! “Zero-dosage” written on sparkling wine labels, like the Melville Blanc de Blancs, means that the wine has not had any sugar added to balance the wine before final bottling (known as “dosage”). This can be a useful indicator of a traditional method sparkling wine with less sugar.
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