The "usual" way is to prepare the sugar syrup. Then set up about 5
glasses and pour the same amount of wine into each, say 50ml. Then add
measured amounts of the syrup to each glass in linear increments - for
example, nothing into 1st glass, 2ml into 2nd, 4ml into 3rd, ... , 8ml
into 5th. Then taste and compare and pick the 1 you like best, that
will give you the ratio of wine to syrup that you then adjust for the
size of the whole batch. For ex., if the glass with 4ml of syrup tastes
best, that's 50:4 = 12.5:1 ratio, so you'd need a litre of the syrup
for each 12.5L of wine.

That's the basic idea, you can tweak it by either using larger wine
samples or lower increments of the sugar syrup additions. You can also
do a 2 stage process where you pick 2 glasses that you like best first
and do a 2nd round of tasting with these as the "border glasses" and 3
new sample in between for better precision.

Also, depending on the strength of the syrup, you might have to do
smaller increments than full mls.

Last caveat - the balance can change over time and also your taste
preference might differ from day to day, so if you have time and a 5
gal carboy, you could actually create 5 bottle samples after the tests
)assuming you're working with 6 gals) and let them age for 1-2 months
and then compare. And then sweeten the 5 gal batch according to that
comparison. That should give you the best result but it's more labour
intensive and you need more equipment, so it might be an overkill.

Pp

On Dec 7, 9:37 am, Al Margita > wrote:
> All:
>
> I am currently making a Estate Series Washington Valley Reisling white
> wine & am thinking about trying to make it a bit sweeter as I prefer
> sweeter wines. From what I've read the way to do it is to make a simple
> syrup & they add some to the bottle when corking it. Not knowing how
> sweet to make it I thought about adding varrious amounts & then marking
> the bottle as to how much simple syrup was added. Then I'll be able to
> tell which sweetness I prefer. Any ideas on how much to start with???
> 1 oz, 1 1/2 oz, 2 oz???? Or am I going about this the wrong way?? Any
> help or suggestions will be appreciated,
> thanks in advance......
> Al