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Notes From the
Vintner
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Welcome
to our column. We hope that you will return to
learn interesting notes on wine, and related
subjects. Wine is a great gift from God to be used
for the enjoyment of man. It is a food, and should
be treated as such. It is meant to lift up the body
and lighten the soul. 8/01/05
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"How much
sugar???
That is the question every winemaker asks. It is important
to understand the reason for adding sugar to the fruit when
you start to make wine. Many people think that it is to make
the wine sweeter. This is WRONG…You add sugar to
the fermentation to achieve the desired alcohol. It is
important to make your wine using sugar to obtain the
correct amount of alcohol, and not to make wine seeing how
high an alcohol you can reach. The alcohol is needed to keep
the wine sound and prevent it from spoilage. You should have
at least 10.5% alcohol to keep the wine from going bad.
When adding sugar to the beginning wine, add only enough to
produce about 12 % alcohol wine. When the wine is
finished…then you add sugar to sweeten to taste
before bottling.
Each fruit has a different amount of sugar in it as a gift
from nature. You should check the Brix of the juice before
you start to ferment the juice. In doing this you can adjust
the juice with cane sugar to reach the level needed to make
a 12% wine.
Here is the formula to use to correct the amount of sugar in
the juice…
Gallons of Juice ( Desired Brix - Existing Brix / 100 -
Desired Brix ) = # Sugar to add:
Any home winemaker can produce 12% wines using the above.
This is the best way. If you wish a stronger alcoholic
drink, I suggest Scotch. After you have finished your wine,
and it is ready to prepare for bottling you need to taste to
judge the sweetness of the wine.
It is easy to adjust the wine by adding sugar. But if you
do, be sure to add sorbate at the rate of one gram per
gallon. This will prevent any little yeast cell from
starting the process again and causing your wine to be like
green homebrew bottled too early.
Now that we know about adding sugar, shall we go check some
wines for sweetness? I know it is a tough job, but it has to
be done….to
us.
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