🍷 Dessert wine

Dessert wine is a sweet wine drunk with dessert or after a meal. EU law has no category called «dessert wine»: the label states how sweet the wine is instead, and a still wine counts as «sweet» from 45 g of sugar per litre. The sweetness comes from concentrated grapes or from adding alcohol of vine origin. ¹²

What the label says. For still wines, EU rules use four sugar terms: dry, medium dry, medium sweet from more than 12 up to 45 g/l, and sweet from 45 g/l. Sparkling wines have their own scale, where demi-sec covers 32–50 g/l and the sweetest term, doux, means more than 50 g/l. ¹

Four EU categories. Most dessert wines belong to one of four EU categories of grapevine products: wine, liqueur wine (category 3), wine from raisined grapes (category 15) or wine of overripe grapes (category 16). Wine from raisined grapes is made without enrichment from grapes partly dried in the sun or shade, with at least 16% natural alcohol, or 272 g of sugar per litre, and at least 9% actual alcohol. Wine of overripe grapes needs more than 15% natural alcohol, at least 15% total and 12% actual. ²

Drying the grapes. Grapes laid out after harvest lose water, usually more than 30%, and this deliberate withering gives wines such as Amarone and passito. Sun-drying is used for some of the best-known Mediterranean sweet wines, including Commandaria, Vin Santo of Santorini, Passito di Pantelleria and Pedro Ximénez, and takes from 5 days in Andalusia to 2–3 weeks in parts of Sicily. ⁴

Noble rot. In the right weather the fungus Botrytis cinerea makes the skins of ripe berries permeable, so water evaporates and the juice concentrates. In Sauternes the juice of such berries usually holds about 350 g of sugar per litre, and in Tokaj up to 700 g/l; the fungus also produces glycerol, which adds body. ⁸

Ice wine. For ice wine the grapes freeze on the vine and are pressed while frozen, so much of the water stays behind as ice and only concentrated juice runs out. ³ The OIV recommends harvesting and pressing at −7 °C or below; the must needs at least 15% potential alcohol, which may not be raised, and the wine at least 5.5% actual alcohol. ⁷

Liqueur wines. Another route is adding neutral alcohol of vine origin or a wine distillate to fermenting must or to wine. Under EU rules a liqueur wine has 15–22% actual alcohol and, apart from certain protected names, at least 17.5% total alcohol and an initial natural strength of at least 12%. So a dessert wine can be either unfortified or fortified. ²

More sulphite in sweet wines. EU rules allow more sulphur dioxide when a wine has at least 5 g/l of sugar: 200 mg/l for reds and 250 for whites and rosés, against 150 and 200 mg/l for dry wines. Spätlese may have up to 300 mg/l and Auslese 350, while Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese, Eiswein, Strohwein and white Sauternes or Barsac may have up to 400 mg/l. ⁶

Why it matters to you. Read the sugar term and the production method on the label, such as late harvest, passito, noble rot or ice wine: they tell you how sweet the wine is and how the sugar was concentrated. ¹³ If you react to sulphites, remember that sweet wines may contain more of them. ⁶ The WHO stresses that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. ⁵