Dry, sweet and fruity

Actually, I prefer them bold, earthy and long.

Today’s post is all about how not to sound like a total noob so you can speak coherently to a somm, land on a wine you like and impress your date. Well, I can’t guarantee your date will like you, but there’s only so much I can do.

Don’t be that guy

Although I study wine, and certainly enjoy drinking it, I by no means consider myself a deep or even medium-deep expert. More like a knees-deep enthusiast wading toward the deep end.

Some funny things I’ve noticed happen when I tell people I study wine:

1. They start name-dropping bottles they (or worse, their friends) have.

2. They start talking completely unnaturally about whatever it is we’re drinking.

Please don’t ever do that. No normal person talks about their wine in tasting note format.

3. While trying to sound smart, they mess up some pretty basic stuff like “dry”, “sweet” and “fruity”.

The first two points above are pretty easy to avoid, so let’s go over the third one so you don’t end up a cautionary tale. It will also help you communicate to a sommelier in a way that is useful to them and help you land on a wine you actually want to drink.

Dry

Often, when people say “dry”, what they are trying to describe is a certain minerality or absence of fruity aromas or flavors.

“This Chablis is really dry.”

The Chablis is minerally.

Similarly for “sweet”, people often mean to describe a wine that has more fruity flavors or aromas, and vice versa.

“I don’t like Sauvignon Blanc, it’s too sweet.”

The Sauvignon Blanc is fruity.

Here’s the difference: dry and sweet are opposite ends of the spectrum that refer to the amount of residual sugar in a wine.

When a wine is “dry”, it means most to all of the sugar has been fermented into alcohol. It’s less about the feeling of dryness in your mouth and more about whether you can perceive any sweetness.

Unless you’ve intentionally opted for a sweet wine such as any of the ones listed in the “Sweet” section below, then 99.99% of the time you’re actually drinking a dry wine.

One exception might be that you mistakenly order a sweet Riesling that the menu doesn’t clearly identify as dry or the waiter isn’t sure whether or not it is dry. It happens.

Sweet

When a wine is “sweet”, it means there is enough residual sugar in it for you to actually perceive it. It’s a spectrum so, again, unless you’re ordering off the dessert wine section of the wine list, you’re most likely on the dry end.

Sweet wines are also usually fruity. So you’d actually be pretty safe calling any sweet wine “fruity”. Some typical sweet wines you might see are:

• Vin Santo/Vinsanto (from Italy/Greece, respectively. Two very different wines but confused because of the homonym.)

• Sauternes

• Tokaji Aszú

• Ice wine (or Eiswein)

• Riesling

  • Kabinett (dry to off-dry)

  • Spätlese (can also be dry)

  • Auslese (can also be dry)

  • Beerenauslese (BA)

  • Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA)

  • Eiswein

Here’s a handy dandy chart by Wine Folly if you want to know more about residual sugar, which is measured in grams/Liter:

Other structural components of wine, like tannins and acid, combined with your personal sensitivities and what food (if any) you have with the wine can impact how you perceive how dry a wine feels, but between two objectively dry wines as defined by their residual sugar levels, one is not “sweeter” than the other. Rather, one is usually fruitier than another. Which leads me to…

Fruity

“Fruity” refers to actual fruit aromas and flavors in a wine, and not to residual sugar. If you’ve smelled a highly aromatic grape like Muscat (which smells like… grape candy), then you’ve smelled a “fruity” wine, regardless of how much residual sugar it has. (Some Muscats are actually fermented dry, although they also run the full range to sweet.) Some other fruity wines are Malbec, Merlot, Zinfandel. These are all usually dry. At least, I haven’t come across any that aren’t (and wouldn't want to)!

Be aware that unlike above where I say most sweet wines are also fruity, not all fruity wines are sweet.

Try for yourself

If you want to do a comparison to see the difference between dry/sweet/fruity, Riesling is a great aromatic grape that illustrates this. It is made in a number of styles from dry to sweet, from mineral to fruity.

Depending on the ripeness, the fruit aromas/flavors can range from citrus (lemon, lime) to tropical fruit (pineapple) and the most exquisite apricot.

The easiest way to put together a tasting is to go to your trusty local wine merchant and ask him to cobble together a 3-4 bottle dry-to-sweet range, then taste them side-by-side.

Let me know how you get on by tagging @third_place_wine with your results, and if you want a deeper dive on deciphering Riesling, vote in the poll below: