What is a “sweet wine”?
The “sweetness” of a wine is defined as the level of residual sugar (RS) in a finished wine after fermentation has been completed. Most wines referred to as “sweet” contain one percent or more residual sugar. Dry (absence of residual sugar) wines can taste “sweet” depending several factors including acidity, alcohol level, and amount of tannin. “Sweet” wines can also taste dry because of these same factors.

Sweet wines include Sherry, Port, Muscat/Muscatel, Madeira, Ice Wine, Vermouth, late harvest wines and wines intentionally infected by botrytis cinerea (noble rot).

What is a “fortified wine”?
A red or white wine that has had alcohol added to it. Usually, the added alcohol is a distilled wine spirit or brandy. In California, fortified wines have a minimum of 14% percent alcohol and are taxed a higher rate than non-fortified wines. Fortified wines include Port, Sherry, Madeira, Marsala, Muscatel and Vermouth.

What is a “dessert wine”?
The legal definition of an American dessert wine is a fortified wine, sweet or dry that contains greater than 15% alcohol by volume. A broader, generally accepted definition of dessert wine is any wine with a residual sugar level above 2% with an alcohol content between 5% and 21% which is served with, or instead of, dessert.

What is Port?
Port is a fortified wine originating from the Douro Valley in Portugal. The wine takes its name from the Atlantic coast city of Oporto at the mouth of the 560-mile long Douro River (“River of Gold”).

While there are port-style wines made around the world from Australia to South Africa to California, strict use of the term Port is reserved for fortified wines produced in Portugal.Over 500 grape varieties are grown in Portugal. Of these, only five are considered to have the exceptional quality for Port wine. These varieties are Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo), Tinta Barroca, Tinto Cao, and Touriga Francesa.

American ports can be either red or white fortified wines with residual sugar levels of 6% to 8.5% and alcohols in the 16% to 21% range. Most American ports use either neutral wine spirits or bandy for fortification. American producers use either Portuguese varietals or dark-skinned varieties like Zinfandel or Petite Sirah to make traditional ruby, tawny or vintage style ports.

What is Sherry?
Sherry is a fortified white wine that originated in the Andalucia region of Spain. Sherry can be made in a broad range of color, flavor and sweetness. In lighter versions – fino and manzanilla, sherry can be and aperitif wine while the medium bodied amontillado and sweet oloroso are some of the world’s sweetest dessert wines.

What is Vermouth?
Vermouth is a fortified white wine flavored (“aromatized) with up to 200 different herbs, spices, fruits and flowers. Sweet vermouth is either white (bianco) or red (rosso) and contains about 18% alcohol while dry vermouth has an alcohol level of 16%. Vermouth was developed as an aperitif wine in Turin in the 1700s.

What is Madeira?
Madeira is a fortified wine named for an island off the North African coast near Portugal. There are four styles of Madeira are named after the grape varieties used to make the wine. Sercial is the palest and driest style of Madeira. Verdelho is slightly sweeter. Bual is sweeter still and darker. Finally, Malmsey the sweetest of the four. The first two styles are usually made like sherry where the sugar is almost fully fermented before the brandy is added. The last two styles are closer to the way Port is made by interrupting the fermentation with grape spirit leaving residual sugar in the Madeira.

What is Ice Wine?
Ice wine is very sweet dessert wine made from grapes allowed to freeze on the vine prior to harvest. The grapes are usually picked at temperatures below 19 degrees F since and pressed while frozen. Some of the water in the grapes freezes out but the sugars and other solids remain dissolved in a very concentrated must with good acid balance. This process yields very small quantities of very sweet, usually expensive honey-like dessert wine.

What is Muscadine?
Muscadine is a sweet dessert style wine made from the Muscadine grape variety (Vitis rotundifolia). Several cultivars of Muscadine have been used for making commercial wines and ports since the 16th Century around the St. Augustine, Florida area. Muscadine is native to the southeastern United States from Delaware to Florida and west to Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Muscadine grapes tend to have lower sugars at ripeness than other wine grapes so most vintners add sugar during the winemaking process resulting a generally sweet wine.

What does “fortified” mean?
A wine is considered “fortified” when alcohol is added during the winemaking process. Fortification increases the alcohol content generally 6-8%. The additional alcohol comes from a grape brandy produced seperately from the same grapes as the original wine or from another grape variety. The point in wine production when the brandy is added affects the style of fortified wine that is produced. If the brandy is added after fermentation then a drier wine is produced. If fortified before the completing of fermentation, the result is a sweeter wine with higher sugar content because the addition of alcohol will stop the fermentation process by neutralizing the yeasts.

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