2023-12-24 07:52:11
Sugar is to blame, as always. But even here it’s not so simple.
Again we are talking regarding simple things that are not so easy to explain. Let’s take wine for example. Even if you don’t drink it or avoid alcohol altogether, you still know the basics. It comes in red, white, pink, and also dry, semi-dry, sweet, semi-sweet and dessert. And if with sweetness everything is clear without clarification, then dry wine raises certain questions. Why is it called that?
Associative logic, of course, will tell you that dry wine, unlike sweet wine, seems to be drying – creating a certain feeling of dryness in the mouth. But this is a wrong guess. Moreover, the concept of “dry wine” has nothing to do with anything that you might rationally associate with this word. So what’s the big deal then?
First, let’s deal with dry mouth itself. It really exists, and you can feel it by drinking wine. In fact, this means that your particular drink is rich in tannins – tannins found in many plants. The best everyday example here would be strong tea.
Specifically, they get into wine because of grape skins, seeds, and so on. In some varieties the tannin will be high and you will feel a characteristic dry astringent sensation, while in others the tannin will be low and you will not even notice it. But there is no relationship here with whether you drink dry or semi-sweet wine. How then is this determined?
It’s really regarding the sugar content. Grape juice contains it in large quantities, and yeast converts sugar into alcohol during fermentation. To make the wine sweet, fermentation is interrupted before all the sugar is released. Dry wine is wine that contains little sugar. And, of course, some varieties are more suitable for the production of sweet wines, because they contain more sugar.
So yeah, it was pretty simple. It is no coincidence that dry wine is opposed to sweet wine, because they are at different ends of the same sugar content scale. If there is less than 9 grams of sugar per liter, then the wine is considered dry. If it’s more than 45 grams, it’s sweet or dessert, but it has its own nuances.
Why then is it not called “unsweetened”? Well, firstly, because there are also semi-dry and semi-sweet wines, and you are unlikely to suggest calling them “semi-unsweetened”. Secondly, because in the process of such production, yeast destroys sugar to dryness. It sounds awkward in Russian, but this term, like many others, came to us in a translated version.
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