MyWinePal: Fruity vs Sweet Wine: A Delicious Deception

Have you ever poured a glass of wine that smells like a basket of ripe summer fruit, only to find it finishes dry and crisp on your palate? If so, you’ve experienced the fascinating interplay between fruitiness and sweetness in wine, two terms often confused but fundamentally different. Let me give you some background so that you can differentiate between these two types of wines.

Dry, Fruity Wines

Let’s start with what many people find most confusing: fruity wines that are actually dry. These wines have fruity aromas such as of cherry, peach, or tropical fruit, yet contain little to no residual sugar. The intensity of these aromas is largely due to chemical compounds known as esters, which form during fermentation. Esters evoke familiar fruit smells that trick our brains into anticipating something sweet.

In addition, wines made from grapes grown in warm climates, like Australia or Chile, tend to develop riper, fuller fruit flavours, even when they are vinified to complete dryness. Add to this the presence of lower tannins and softer acidity (due to the warmer climate fully ripening the grapes), making the wine’s texture feel smooth and round, which further enhances the illusion of sweetness. However, these wines finish cleanly on the palate, without the coating or lingering sensation that sugar imparts.  Note that dry red wines typically have 1-4 g/l of residual sugar.

Some wines that fall into this category include Beaujolais made from the Gamay Noir grape, which offers vibrant red fruit flavours but finishes bone dry. A dry Riesling can showcase lively aromas of lime, green apple, and stone fruit while maintaining a tart, refreshing structure. Likewise, a dry-style Gewürztraminer may suggest sweetness with its lychee and rose petal bouquet, yet be completely dry in terms of residual sugar. These wines can surprise even seasoned tasters because their aromas and mouthfeel contrast with their sugar levels.

Sweet Wines

On the other side of the spectrum are truly sweet wines, which contain measurable amounts of residual sugar left behind after fermentation. This sweetness can be achieved in several ways. Sometimes the fermentation process is stopped early, either by chilling the must or by removing the yeast, leaving unfermented sugar behind. In other cases, the wine is fortified by adding a distilled spirit like brandy before fermentation completes, which preserves some of the natural grape sugar. 

Sauternes from Bordeaux is a classic example of a very sweet wine, offering deep flavours of apricot, marmalade, and honey. Ice wine, harvested from grapes frozen on the vine, delivers unctuous notes of mango, peach syrup, and pineapple along with a thick texture. Fortified wines like Port tend to taste of fig, plum jam, and chocolate, while lighter wine styles such as Moscato d’Asti evoke delicate aromas of orange blossom and honeysuckle, with just a touch of sweetness on the palate. These wines do not merely hint at sweetness; they are sweet, often with a plush, almost syrupy texture that lingers long after you swallow.

How To Tell The Difference?

So how do you tell fruity from sweet? Focus on the finish. A dry white wine will typically disappear from your palate with a crisp, clean snap, while a sweet wine leaves a lingering, almost velvety coating in your mouth. It’s entirely possible to sip a wine that smells like a fruit cocktail and yet finishes dry.  Dry, fruity red wines will also finish dry on your palate, while a sweet red wine like port will leave that sweet coating in your mouth and linger for a long time.  So pay attention to the finish.

If you still are confused, you may try checking the back label of the wine bottle.  Some winemakers put the residual sugar information there (in grams/litre), along with the percent alcohol. You can also check the winery’s website page for that wine.  There will typically be a description about how the wine was made, plus a chart showing sugars, percent alcohol, and more. 

Here are two BC wine examples to show the difference.  The first wine is from Summerhill Pyramid Winery for their Ehrenfelser Icewine 2020 NCO and the second wine is a Gamay Noir from Haywire Winery for their Haywire Gamay 2022.  Sometimes you will see “Residual Sugar” and other times you will see “RS” on the winery website or on the back label of the bottle. Wow, what a difference in RS between these two wines.

If you don’t want a wine as sweet as ice wine, I suggest a Late Harvest wine. Here is one you could try, the Volcanic Hills 2021 Riesling Late Harvest coming in at 112 g/l of residual sugar. Dolcetto is another red grape you may want to consider if you like dry, fruity wines.  You may want to try the Stags Hollow Dolcetto 2023.  It has 3.5 g/l of residual sugar, which is still considered dry.

I hope this brief discussion of dry, fruity wines versus sweet wines has helped you out. Now go out and try some wines and see if you can more easily pick out the difference.