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Dry and sweet

What "dry" means, and why fruity wine is not the same as sweet wine.

The short answer

Dry means the yeast used up nearly all the grape sugar. Sweet means some was left. The confusion is that a strongly fruity dry wine often reads as sweet, because your nose is reporting ripe fruit and your brain files that as sugar.

Overview

Dry means no perceptible sugar. It does not mean the wine tastes of nothing, and it does not mean the opposite of fruity.

This is the single most common confusion in wine. A wine can be intensely fruity — bursting with blackberry and plum — and completely dry, because those are aromas rather than sugar. Most Australian Shiraz is like this.

Conversely, a wine can taste less sweet than it is. A Mosel Riesling with real sugar in it can seem refreshing because the acidity is so high that it balances the sweetness out.

The practical scale runs: bone dry, dry, off-dry (a clear touch of sweetness), medium, sweet, and lusciously sweet dessert wine.

If you have been told you like dry wine but keep enjoying things people call sweet, you are not confused. Off-dry wine is genuinely good and has an unearned reputation.

Where you can see it

Dry and unmistakably fruity
A ripe Argentine Malbec is technically dry and smells intensely of black fruit. Many people describe it as sweet, and they are describing the aroma.
Sweet and not remotely cloying
A Mosel Riesling can carry a great deal of sugar and taste fresh, because its acidity is high enough to balance it. Sweetness is a relationship, not a number.

What people get wrong

1 widely repeated claim this page corrects.

Not true

“Riesling is a sweet wine.”

Most Riesling made today is dry. Germany’s own production is majority dry, and Alsace, Austria and Australia make it dry almost exclusively.

Go shallower or deeper

The beginner page and the chemistry page are both correct, and neither substitutes for the other.

Go deeper

Sugar in wine: from grape to residual sweetness

Where grape sugar comes from, what happens to it in fermentation, and why residual sugar and perceived sweetness are two different things.

Sources

Sources consulted

More in learn

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Acidity

The mouthwatering quality that makes wine refreshing — and the most useful thing to notice.

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Choosing a bottle

Practical tactics for a shop or a wine list when you do not know what you want.

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Grape varieties

A dozen grapes will get you a long way — but the grape alone does not determine the wine.