In the Wednesday, October 12 issue of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Mr. John Long wrote an article about Charles Shaw wine and what causes wine to be sweet. Mr. Long commented the “Two Buck Chuck” had flavors of “cotton candy.” The candy flavor Mr. Long found in the Charles Shaw wine is not caused by the addition of sugar; rather, it is caused by the method used to ferment the grapes. Instead of doing a traditional fermentation, the winemaker is using carbonic maceration.

With carbonic maceration, uncrushed grapes are placed in a large vat that is then blanketed with carbon dioxide. The juice ferments inside the skin of the grape. The skins self-break and the fermentation process continues. The signature of this process on wine is the creation of candy aromas and flavors. The best example of wine made this way, Beaujolais Nouveau, will be coming out in a few weeks.

Sweetness can be added to standard table wines at two points of the winemaking process. Sweetness added before the fermentation occurs is also called chaptalisation or enrichment; sweetness added after the fermentation is finished is called sussreserve.

In typical chaptalisation, beet or cane sugar is added before fermentation occurs. The addition of the sugar at this point of the process is used to increase the alcohol level in the wine.

Sussreserve is the addition unfermented grape juice to a finished wine. This is done to increase the sweetness of the wine and to soften red wines. Sussreserve is most often used in German winemaking; it does not create these candy aromas since German wines are rarely candy-like.

Leaving grapes on the vine longer does increase the sugar level in the grape and creates more jammy aromas in the wine, but it does not increase the sweetness of the wine. Even raisining grapes, as in Italian Amarone di Valpolicella, creates dried fruit flavors but does not create a sweet table wine.

So, the next time you are trying a wine with candy-like aromas, remember that they are due to the process of fermenting the grapes, carbonic maceration, not due to the addition of sugar.