🍷 Trocken

Trocken is the German form of the term dry in the sugar-content terms of Annex III of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/33, which lists the permitted terms in the languages of the Union.

For still wine and other grapevine products (Part B), dry means a sugar content of up to 4 grams per litre, or up to 9 grams per litre if the total acidity, in grams of tartaric acid per litre, is not more than 2 grams below the residual sugar content. Trocken is one of the terms listed for this category.

The next steps are medium dry, in German halbtrocken: above the dry limit and up to 12 g/l, or up to 18 g/l if the acidity is no more than 10 g/l below the sugar content; medium, in German lieblich: up to 45 g/l; and sweet, in German süß: at least 45 g/l.

For sparkling wine (Part A) the same word has a different meaning: a dry fizz is not as low in sugar as a dry still wine. There, trocken is listed with sec and dry for 17 to 32 grams of sugar per litre. Extra trocken stands for 12 to 17 g/l, and the driest categories are brut nature (naturherb, under 3 g/l) and extra brut (extra herb, 0 to 6 g/l).

On a bottle of sparkling wine the sugar term is compulsory, and the real sugar content may not differ from it by more than 3 g/l (Article 47). On still wine and other products it is optional (Article 52) and the tolerance is 1 g/l, so a still wine may carry no trocken at all.