On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:24:37 +0200, Michael Pronay >
wrote:

>IanH > wrote:
>
>>>> But some sweet wines are made with very high initial sugar
>>>> content - these can be normal strength and still sweet.
>
>>> Typically Sauternes would be of this type.
>>
>> Especially when chaptalised.
>
>Of course. But the best (Yquem et al.) are not, to the best of my
>knowledge. Generic Sauternes, however, is always.

I wish I could be confident that were true. I think many wine makers
in the Bordeaux region find it _really_ hard to resist adding "just
that extras half a degree". For my taste it almost always throws the
wine out of balance. In the case of the lesser Sauternes, Monbazillacs
and so on, it does so to the extent of making them undrinkable.

The point (in my view) is this. When grapes are dried - either through
the action of botrytis on the skins, or through long sun drying in
passerillé wines and vins paillés or the must is concentrated through
extracting water in eisweine, you end up with initial sugar and
acidity that is in balance. When a winemaker chaptalises, a sweet
wine, even if s/he does so to increase the alcohol level, it allows
the winemaker to stop the fermentation earlier and still have the
amount of alcohol s/he wants, so the amount of _residual_ sugar in
the finished wine is increased, of course. But the acidity isn't, and
the wine all too easily ends up wrong.

You're perfectly right of course that beeren and trockenbeerenauslese
wines are also made without sussréserve and therefore retain that
balance that marks the best sweet wines, in my view.

Anders, I'm sorry. You're perfectly right that my original post could
have been misread. Sorry about that again.

>But then we normally are not at 12/13% alc., but much less, except
>maybe for some Ruster Ausbruch wines.

Quite true. However stopping fermentation at relatively low alcohol
levels (to retain high RS) requires some kind of intervention,
(sulphuring in the bad old day, or fine filtering, or thermal shock)
whereas the ideal sweet wine from Aquitaine will have stopped
fermenting naturally with considerable residual sugar, AND end up with
these higher alcohol levels. Theoretically.
--
All the best
Fatty from Forges