![]() The lack of acidity gives the elusive taste of a sweeter wine. This is achieved through harvesting the grapes when they are at the peak of their ripeness where acidity is lower than when unripe. A dry wine may contain no residual sugar but still taste sweet. Grapes that are grown in areas that don't allow them to reach full growth or where they are harvested before full ripeness will produce a wine with more acidity and less sugar and alcohol.ĭry light bodied white wines carry the characteristic of being dry by containing no residual sugar, having converted all the sugar into alcohol in the fermentation process. When a grape ripens, it moves from containing more acid to containing less acid and more sugar. This will also create a higher alcohol content compared to a sweeter light bodied white wine. In a dry, light bodied wine, the winemaker will usually convert all the sugars to alcohol to create the dryness. ![]() More sugar in the grape means there is more sugar to transform into more alcohol and vice versa. Secondly, during fermentation, it is the sugar that transforms into alcohol. A greater amount of sugar in a grape means a greater amount of sugar in a wine which will create thickness (think of the sugars creating the textue of syrup). Larger amounts of residual sugar also creates a thicker wine. White wines tend to contain less alcohol than red wines overall so they generally have less body, by comparison. A higher alcohol content makes a more viscous, heavier, fuller wine, while a lower alcohol content creates the opposite effect. Alcohol content is the primary contributor to the body of a wine. A lighter body in a white wine can be defined in three different ways: less residual sugar content, lower alcohol and higher acidity. A lighter body is going to feel lighter in weight, thinner like water instead of thick like syrup. The body of a wine is the texture and weight of the wine in the mouth. This self-indulgent preamble brings me on nicely to the next in my series on the Nine Styles of Wine. ![]() I'll definitely be stocking up on that one. Lovely and light with succulent pear and white-pepper aromas, followed by nectarine flavours. Speaking of wine (I know., that's what I'm here to do!), I got a lovely bottle of Ferdinand Mayr 2019 Grüner Veltliner, from Aldi, for only £6.99. We also went for lunch, down in Rustington, with the in-laws, drank some nice wine with lunch and had a few siestas. ![]() A little bit of slaving was done, resulting in the harvest of 15kg of spuds, a couple of lovely watermelons and a large bag of Trinidad Moruga Scorpion chili peppers, these average 1.2 million Scoville Heat Units (compared to the hottest chili in the world, the Carolina Reaper at 1.5 million SHU) so need to be used very sparingly! In fact it's a bit of a challenge to come up with dishes that we can use them in. As the weather was a bit rubbish we didn't feel obliged to spend all our time slaving away at the allotment. And very pleasant it was too!Įm and I usually try and cram so much in to our breaks that we often feel like we need to come back to work for a rest. If it's not fun to drink, it won't improve your dish.I took some time off last week. Regardless, always taste a wine before you cook with it. And some whites are always sweet: Sauternes and "late-harvest" bottlings of grapes such as Riesling and Chenin Blanc are examples. Some wines often fall between dry and off-dry: many New World Chardonnays, Rieslings, Viogniers and Pinot Gris, for example. In general, some whites wines are almost always made in a dry style: Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Spanish Albariños and Austrian Grüner Veltliners, for example. Technically, wines with less than 10 grams per liter are considered "dry," those with more than 30 grams per liter are "sweet" or dessert wines, and anything in between is considered "off-dry." In practice, different people have different thresholds for tasting sweetness in wine, so what you consider dry another person might taste as sweet. Whether a wine is considered "dry" or not depends on the amount of residual sugar it has. When a recipe calls for a "dry white wine," what wines do they mean? I know a dessert wine is not considered dry.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |