WineLovers Discussion Group

I’ll have to agree with Robin on this one; one should never confuse a wine being tannic and a dry wine.
As I think about it more, I don’t think there is a precise definition for a “dry wine”. Even though a majority of the population might consider wines with a so-and-so RS percentage “dry” or so-and so RS percentage “sweet”. Everyone has their own personal threshold for level of sweetness (or dryness). BTW I think Robin’s definition; dry is not sweet, fits the bill nicely.

Salute

having just returned from canada - which publishes a sugar code for each wine i discovered some interesting things.

two red wines - yellow tail and calatera are a sugar code 1 - definitly NOT dry. some of the niagara wines labeled as dry rieslings are a 0 and some are 1. there is at least one 'off dry' riesling (according to the label) which is a 2. i wish we could have something like that here.

creightond wrote:having just returned from canada - which publishes a sugar code for each wine i ........ i wish we could have something like that here.

I agree. While not the complete answer wrt how it feels in the mouth, it is very helpful, especially when comparing wines of the same varietal.

Jackson's 'Wine Science' defines dry as 'having no perceptible sweetness,' which is a useful way of looking at it.

Other than this pragmatic way of using the word, there are at least two others: in my experience winemakers use 'dry' to mean 'no fermentable sugars' (ie <2g/L or so), and marketers use it to mean 'less sweet than similar examples, therefore sophisticated, so buy some.'