Sugar In Wine: A Quick Guide For Healthy Wine Lovers

• Avoiding Wine Sugar • Fine Wine Blog • Sugar In Wine • Wine Sugar Content

Most countries aren’t required to label the sugar in wine. Based on the bottle, it would be impossible to tell how much sugar is in a wine without some background knowledge. If access to a wine tech sheet isn’t easy, there’s a general rule of thumb to follow. The sweeter and the cheaper the wine, the more sugar it is likely to have.
Contrary to popular belief, white wine is not necessarily higher in sugar than red wine. Regardless of the colour, the most important general factors in determining the amount of sugar in your wine are 1) its sweetness; and 2) its quality.

Why Is There Sugar In Wine?

Sugar in fine wine is not an additive, since neither corn syrup nor table sugars are added during winemaking. Only cheap wines will add sugar or grape juice concentrate to sweeten wine. Rather, the sugar in fine wine is a residual sugar that comes from the fructose and glucose naturally found in grapes.
During the wine making process, yeast eats the fruit sugar of the wine grape juice, creating ethanol alcohol as a by-product. Dry wines are created when the yeast eats through the entirety of the sugar, while sweet wine is created when the yeast is stopped, creating less alcohol but a sweeter flavour. As a result, very sweet wines may have only 8-9% alcohol, compared to upwards of 11-13% when dry.
If avoiding sugar in general is not a priority, most wine drinkers prefer a bit of residual sugar (especially in red wine) because it adds additional richness and complexity to the overall flavour profile.

How to Determine Sugar Amount

While the best way to determine the amount of sugar in a wine is to read the wine tech sheet (usually available from the producer of the wine), there is also an estimative pattern of residual sugar from which generalizations can be drawn.
Wines classified as Bone Dry have the least amount of sugar. On average, a glass of such extremely dry wine has less than 1 calorie of sugar. Dry classified wine averages up to 6 calories of sugar per glass, while Off-Dry wine usually has 6 to 21 calories of sugar per glass. This Chateau Pavie Decesse (2008), for example, is one of our favourite dry Bordeaux reds.
Wines classified as Very Sweet are at the opposite end of the spectrum, with by far the most sugar content (72-130 calories per glass) – over 10 times more sugar than an off-dry. Sweet classified wines have quite a bit less, ranging from 21 to 72 calories on average. This Chateau d’Yquem (2008), for example, is one of our favourite sweet Bordeaux whites.

How to Avoid Sugar In Wine

Aside from drinking less sweet wine, the best way to avoid sugar is to enjoy high quality fine wine. The high quality fine wines we feature in our online wine shop, for example, come from reputable world-class producers that would never jeopardize their name by using added sugar to sweeten their wine.
Moreover, the higher quality grapes used by fine wine producers don’t need the added sweetness in order to taste fruity and appealing. Cheap wine usually has a higher amount of residual sugar, and very cheap wine may even have sugar additives.

Sugar Unfriendly Reds & Whites

Dry red wines such as pinot noir, cabernet franc, merlot, cabernet sauvignon, and syrah tend to have less than 1 gram of sugar per ounce. This Chateau Pavie (2003) is one such good example of a high quality red dry, and is a mix of cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, and merlot. Dry whites such as pinot blanc, sauvignon blanc, and pinot grigio also usually have under 1 gram of sugar per ounce.

Fine Wine Experts

Here at Moncharm we are fine wine experts who love to get in touch with readers who share our passion. If you have any questions or queries about wine, please feel free to contact us at any time for a prompt response and quick advice regarding fine wine investment, wine collecting, and anything else fine wine!
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Wednesday 6 January 2016