Hidden detail to look out for on bottles of wine that shows if it's sweet or dry

18 February 2023 , 10:00

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Hidden detail to look out for on bottles of wine that shows if it's sweet or dry

It can be overwhelming trying to pick a bottle of wine from the supermarket or a wine store, as there's so much choice with entire aisles full of bottle after bottle.

You might find yourself tempted to pick the cheapest or the prettiest bottle with the most eye-catching label, but according to a sommelier, there's an easier way to tell if a wine is right for you.

Carlos Santos, the Wine and Operations Manager for Humble Grape, has shared a trick to find your perfect bottle of wine and he claims the key is in a 'hidden' detail on the label.

Speaking to The Mirror, the wine expert explained where you need to look on the bottle to find it.

Carlos is trained as a sommelier (Courtney Pochin/ Daily Mirror)

He said: "A question that we often get asked on the floor in the shop is about whether a bottle of white wine is dry or sweet, there is a rule to navigate that.

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"You will need to look at the back of the label, turn the bottle around and look for the alcohol level of the wine."

To demonstrate, Carlos takes two bottles of Riesling wine which can vary between sweet and dry. The label on the back of one says it is 7.5% alcohol.

He then takes another Riesling from the same vineyard and shows how this one is 12% alcohol.

You need to look at the alcohol level on the label (Mirrorpix)

"The rule of thumb here is that the lower the level of alcohol in the wine, the chances are there will be more sugar left in the wine because the fermentation has not finished and the yeast has not consumed all of the sugar that was left in the wine. So this wine should be quite sweet.

"In the 12% alcohol bottle, chances are this wine is much, much drier as it means that the yeast has consumed all the sugar which is why there's more alcohol."

The expert went on to warn that a pretty bottle did not necessarily indicate that the wine was good quality, while a simple design similarly did not indicate lower quality.

He claims instead the snazzily designed wine bottles are simply to help the product stand out on a supermarket shelf when there's so much other competition.

Carlos adds that if you want to buy the prettiest or the cheapest bottle of wine available, that's completely fine to do as "the best wine in the world is the one that you like."

However, he warns that the same mass-produced wines produced by companies each year may taste a little more "chemically" than others, which is something to take into consideration.

Courtney Pochin