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Making Wine
Without Sugar
Making wine without sugar is
like making Kool-Aid without sugar. You’ll get
a fruit tasting drink but it will taste like
flavored water without any kick at all.
That is not to say that
making wine without sugar is like making
Kool-Aid at all, but both drinks need sugar for
taste but also for very different reasons.
Let’s just say right off the bat that there is
no making wine without sugar. It just isn’t
happening. This has nothing to do with any
personal preference or any kind of secret
family recipe, making wine without sugar is
impossible because just like sugar gives
Kool-Aid its sweetness, sugar also gives wine
its fermentation. Any attempt at making wine
without sugar is like trying to create a
chemical reaction necessary to the making of
wine without the main ingredient. It just
cannot happen.
Sugar is the ingredient that reacts when you
ferment wine to create alcohol. So making
wine without sugar is simply making
fruit juice. Grapes are the most well known
fruit that wine is made from, so let’s just
stick with that for this discussion. Grapes
have a certain level of natural sugar in them
that is normally not enough to ferment into
alcohol alone. Wine makers all have their
secrets, from what kind of yeast they use to
how much sugar they add to get their alcohol
content. You can find charts available that
tell you how much sugar to add to get a certain
alcohol content but many experienced wine
makers prefer to use their own judgment based
on age old family recipes and their own
personal experience.
Just
Like Beer
Traditionally wine has higher alcohol
content than beer, but if you use too little
sugar then you get a wine with about the same
amount of alcohol as beer and that is wine with
just no punch at all. But whenever you are
adding or changing the amount of sugar in your
fermenting wine it is always a good idea to
keep an eye on how much alcohol content you
will get from the sugar you have added to your
mix. There are instruments you can use to check
for alcohol content and you want to keep track
of that, because too much alcohol content in
your wine can be dangerous and potentially
illegal. Always know what you are doing when
you are making wine because not only is it
something that could potentially be dangerous
to drink if done incorrectly, but it takes
months to make a batch of wine and if you make
a mistake you will spend months regretting
it.
So now we know that making wine without sugar
just is not possible. Sugar is what gives the
wine its alcohol content and wine isn’t wine
without alcohol content. The amount of sugar in
your fermenting wine will determine how much
alcohol content you will have and it is very
important that you keep a close eye on the
potential alcohol content of your
wine.
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