Wine sweetness charts

For better or worse, I signed up with Pinterest. I get a lot of notifications on my phone with suggestions to look at. I ignore most of these. But occasionally something pops ups that I look at. I did put wine as one of my interests, and I do get some wine related content. So when one came up with a picture of wine sweetness charts, I had a look.

It had a chart showing different wines on a sweetness scale. If you are curious about this, just Google ‘Wine sweetness charts’ and you get a good selection. Here are some of the best ones that I found after doing this search.

I was curious to see if there was any divergence of views from different sources. Interesting to see that both Wine Folly, and I Love Wine have identical lists. Maybe they got their information from the same source (or maybe one of them copied from the other.

I was surprised to see Sauvignon Blanc so high up on the dry scale for white wine. I find this (if good) quite fruity. And I associate ‘fruitiness’ with sweetness. Shows how wrong I was about that. Maybe this is why they can be so good (especially if from New Zealand).

Top of the dry scale for white wines is Muscadet. And if you have been following my blog, you will know that Muscadet Sevre et Maine is one of my favourite white wines.

They use ‘dry’ for red wines too. Normally you hear the the word ‘dry’ with ‘dry white wines’, not with red wines. I have not heard of, (or tasted) a ‘Sangiovese’ before. I will keep an eye out for this to try. I have had a Tempranillo, and liked it. For some reason I thought it was Italian, but is in fact a Spanish wine. Cabernet Sauvignon is quite high up on the dryness scale. Maybe this is why it is a good bet for cheaper wines, whereas the Merlot (in my opinion) is not.

Below is a wine chart (also from Wine Folly) that relates the sweetness to the residual sugar levels. Quite useful.

You may need to search and download it yourself as may not view well on a small screen. I could not find the precise link for this, but here is a link to more information about wine sweetness from Wine Folly.

Two more charts below from the Wine Buying Guide, similar but not identical to the earlier ones.
Again, you may need to download these charts from their website.
Here is a link to the red wine chart. Here is a link to the white wine chart.

For the reds, this chart puts the Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo and the Sangiovese all equal to the top of the dry scale.
At some point this year I will be taking a closer look at Malbec wines. My friend Ed really likes these and recommended them to me. I have liked what I have tried so far. Normally these are from Argentina, but see Malbecs listed here from both Argentina and France. (Argentinian is sweeter). Definitely further investigation (and tasting) of this coming soon.

As with the Malbecs, Cabernet Sauvignon is also on this list twice. One from California, and the other not named, but assuming France. The Old World wine is again drier.

For the whites, no mention here of Muscadet. As with some of the reds, it has Chardonnay listed twice. Oaked and Unoaked (Chablis). With the Unoaked being a bit sweeter. It also has Pinot Grigio and Pinot Gris as separate entries. I thought this was basically the same, but just with the Italian and French wording being different. Again I hope to look into this more when I can, and will update you.

I am finishing this post in Florida. Here again visiting my mother, and getting some winter sun. And yes, I have been tasting more American wines. See next month’s post for those reviews. And after a bit of a break, I will be back in Boulogne in April, and will be bringing back more French wines to taste.