obsessed with wine podcast with Wesley Cable Sr On the New York City Podcast Network

The Daily Taste: Wednesday May 11th, 2022 – Are Wines High In Sugar?

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Hello Wine Enthusiasts Welcome to the Daily Taste for Wednesday May 11th 2022I saw an ad online the other day advertising low sugar wines The picture shows a wine glass full of granular sugar and its heading reads How much sugar does your wine contain Most people probably can t definitively answer this question and may assume that there is some sugar in their wine based on this add The advertisement is supposed to get you to consider buying their low sugar wines as a healthy alternative to the wines you already drink Since wine labels don t have to report on the sweetness level of their wines it makes sense that most people don t know So how much sugar is in our wines If we are looking to cut sugar out of our diets does it mean we have to give up wine too These are questions I wanted to answer so here is what I learned All Wine grapes contain the fruit sugars fructose and glucose During alcoholic fermentation the yeast eat the sugars and produce ethanol and carbon dioxide Any sugar that is left by the yeast after fermentation is called residual sugar or RS The level of RS desired in the wine is determined by the winemaker depending on the type of wine he or she wants to make The winemaking team keeps a very close eye on their fermentations and runs analysis on wine samples everyday in the lab The sugar level of the fermenting juice is one of the most important analysis done This tells the winemaking team how the fermentation is progressing If the winemaker wants to make a sweet wine they will typically arrest the fermentation at the desired sugar level by dropping the temperature of the tank to stop the yeast activity If a dry wine is desired the winemaking team will let the fermentation go until all of the detectible sugar has been consumed It s difficult to get a wine to bone dry which means there is absolutely no residual sugar Therefore most wines that are considered Dry still contain between 0 and 10 g l RS For comparison a can of regular Coke has 108 g l of sugar Off-dry wines such as some Rieslings contain 10-35 g l RS Sweet wines like Moscato and sweet Riesling contain 35-120 g l RS and very sweet wines including Tawney Ports Ice Wines and Sauternes contain 120 220 g l Rs So what does this mean It means that if you are drinking a dry wine such as a Cabernet Sauvignon Chardonnay a Pinot Noir or a Viognier for example you are getting a wine that has very low sugar You would have to drink almost 11 glasses of your favorite Zinfandel to get the amount of sugar in a can of coke That s assuming the wine has 10 g l of RS and most dry wines have much less One more thing to consider there is a correlation between cheap wines and residual sugar levels Cheap wines typically mask the taste of lower quality grapes by leaving additional residual sugar Finally if you enjoy the content of this podcast I encourage you to go to the show website at www obsessedwithwine net and click on the link at the top of the page called Buy me a glass of wine Unfortunately it doesn t buy me any wine but it does give you the opportunity to donate to the show which helps me offset some of the costs of production Anything you can donate is greatly appreciated

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