Wine myths
Adding sugar to wine makes it sweet
“Chaptalisation is adding sugar, so chaptalised wine is sweeter.”
Sugar added before or during fermentation is consumed by the yeast and converted to alcohol. It raises the strength, not the sweetness.
The full answer
Chaptalisation means adding sugar to the must so that fermentation produces more alcohol. The yeast eat it. In a wine fermented dry, none of it survives as sweetness.
The purpose is to correct for a season where the fruit did not accumulate enough sugar to reach a viable alcohol level — historically a routine problem in cool, marginal regions in poor years.
It is regulated rather than free. The EU permits it in specified zones and within specified limits, prohibits it in others, and warmer member states generally cannot use it at all. Where enrichment is permitted, the permitted increase is capped.
Sweetening a finished wine is an entirely different operation — adding unfermented grape must or, in Germany, Süssreserve — and is regulated separately.
A biochemical or physical process that has been demonstrated experimentally and is not seriously contested — the sort of statement that appears in enology textbooks without hedging.
What would settle it: A controlled experiment failing to reproduce the process.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013 — Common Organisation of Agricultural Markets — European Union
- International Code of Oenological Practices — OIV
- WSET educational materials and the Systematic Approach to Tasting — Wine & Spirit Education Trust