Welcome to part 2 of Wine for beginners: Getting started. In the first part we looked at the major wine types (red wine, white wine, rosé and bubbles). Now we are tackling a word you meet again and again when you talk about wine: the style. Is it dry, off-dry or sweet?
It might sound technical, but it is actually one of the easiest ways to figure out what you like yourself. Once you understand where a wine sits on the scale from bone dry to honey sweet, you already have a good compass in hand.
What you will learn
- What dry, off-dry and sweet really mean
- Why a completely dry wine can easily smell of fruit
- How to put words to your own style
- When sweetness is a really good thing
What do dry and sweet mean?
When grape juice becomes wine, the yeast converts the grapes' sugar into alcohol. If almost all of the sugar gets used up along the way, we call the wine dry. If a little sugar is deliberately allowed to remain, the wine becomes off-dry or outright sweet.
You can think of it as a scale:
- Dry: no noticeable sweetness. Most everyday red wines and many white wines sit here.
- Off-dry (and lightly semi-sweet): a hint of sweetness that makes the wine round and soft in the mouth.
- Sweet: clear sweetness, which you typically find in dessert wines.
So it is about how much sugar is left in the finished wine. And one little detail worth knowing: a dry wine is not poor in flavour because it is dry. It simply draws its charm from elsewhere, from fruit, acidity and aroma instead of sugar.
Fruity is not the same as sweet
This is where a lot of people stumble at the start, and it is entirely understandable. You take a sip of a dry white wine, and it smells of peach, apple or citrus. Your brain immediately says "sweet". But it is not.
What you are experiencing is fruit aroma, that is, the smell and taste of fruit, and not sugar. A wine can be bone dry and at the same time bursting with fruity notes. It is a bit like the difference between smelling a bowl of strawberries and eating them with sugar on top. The smell is the same, but the sweetness is two different things.
A few things that can fool your palate:
- Alcohol can give a faint warmth and a sense of softness on the tip of the tongue, which is easily mistaken for sugar.
- Low acidity makes a wine seem rounder and therefore sweeter than it actually is.
- Strong fruit aroma tempts the brain to expect sweetness.
Next time you taste, try to notice whether the sweetness actually lingers at the back of the tongue, or whether it is "just" lots of fruit. That little exercise sharpens your palate faster than you think.
How to find your style
The good news: there is no right or wrong style. There is only the one you like. But it helps to have a few reference points when you need to put words to it.
Ask yourself a couple of simple questions:
- Do you like a wine that feels slender and fresh, or one that feels round and soft? The first often points towards the dry with good acidity, the second towards a hint of sweetness.
- Do you prefer to drink the wine on its own or with food? Dry wines are often versatile at the meal, while a sweet wine likes to have a particular dish to dance with.
- When you taste something with a little sweetness, do you think "delicious" or "too much"?
A good tip for training your own scale: taste two wines side by side, one dry and one off-dry, and notice the difference. Suddenly the words become concrete, because you have a taste to hang them on. And remember that your style is allowed to shift. Many people begin with a touch of sweetness and over time move towards the dry, while others hold firm. Both are perfectly fine.
When sweetness is an advantage
Sweetness has a slightly tarnished reputation with some, but used correctly it is a gift. It is all about balance. A sweet wine is rarely just sugar; the good sweetness is accompanied by a fresh acidity that keeps it in check, so that the wine seems full and fresh at the same time rather than heavy.
Sweetness plays especially beautifully with food in a couple of classic cases:
- With the salty. Sweetness and salt lift each other up, a bit like salted caramel. A sweet wine with a strong, salted cheese is a fine example.
- With the spicy. If the dish has chilli or hot spices, a little sweetness can soften the heat and make the meal more comfortable.
- With dessert. Here the main rule is that the wine should preferably be at least as sweet as the sweet thing you are eating. Otherwise the wine ends up seeming thin and sour next to the cake.
Sweet wines, where the grapes' sugar is concentrated, are often called dessert wine, and they are made in several ways: by letting the grapes hang for a long time and become overripe, by drying after harvest (the Italian passito method is one example), or by a beneficial fungus called noble rot, which dries the grapes on the vine. The result is a wine with clear sweetness, typically enjoyed in a smaller glass. More about them later in the series.
In short
- Dry, off-dry and sweet describe how much sugar is left in the finished wine.
- A dry wine can easily smell and taste of fruit. Fruit aroma is not the same as sweetness.
- Alcohol and low acidity can trick you into perceiving a wine as sweeter than it is.
- You find your style by tasting attentively and ideally comparing two wines side by side.
- Sweetness is an advantage with salty, spicy and sweet food, as long as the wine has fresh acidity as a counterpoint.
Frequently asked questions
Is sweet wine the same as cheap wine?
No. Sweetness is a deliberate style, not a sign of quality. Some of the most carefully crafted wines in the world are sweet dessert wines, where the grapes' sugar is concentrated with great care, and where a lively acidity keeps the sweetness in balance.
Why does my dry wine still taste a little sweet?
It is typically the fruit aroma or the soft warmth of the alcohol on the tongue playing a trick on you. Try to feel at the back of the tongue: does an actual sweetness linger, or does the sensation disappear quickly? In the latter case the wine is probably dry.
Ready for the next step?
Now you have a grasp of style, and that is a strong foundation. In the next part, How to taste wine: See, smell, taste, we take the practical step and practise putting words to what the glass tells us, so that the difference between fruit and sweetness becomes entirely concrete.
Take your time to taste your way forward, and let your taste buds decide. The best wine is the one you like, with the food you like. If you feel like it, you can dive into our selection and find a dry one and an off-dry one to taste side by side. It is the cosiest way to get to know your own style.