Dry Wine January
Whether you’re on team deprivation or team moderation, now is a perfect time to revisit what exactly dry wine means.
Dry January is all anyone can talk about lately, besides Ozempic, politics, wars, fires, and giant birds (at least here in Rome).
Never one to miss out on a juicy conversation, I’m throwing my sommelier hat in the ring and making ‘Dry January’ a learning experience.
Whether you’re on team deprivation or team moderation, now is a perfect time to revisit what exactly dry wine means.
But it tastes fruity.
There are many steps to wine tasting that involve all the senses, but the abbreviated swirl-sniff-sip can lead to a lot of confusion.
Many of the world’s most popular classically styled dry wines, whites like Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay or reds like Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon are known for their big, bold juicy-fruit notes. What’s the deal?
Aroma Versus Flavor
“Note” is a confusing word.
Synonyms include: tinge, hint, shade, and suggestion. These are all ways to describe aesthetic or sensual elements of anything from food and wine to art and design.
In wine tasting, “notes” apply to scents, flavors, and even the finish. When it comes to sweet versus dry, there’s an important distinction between aroma and flavor. More specifically, the nose and the palate.
We perceive the sensation of sweetness or lack thereof, on the palate, ie, on our tongues and the insides of our mouths. We feel sweetness. Literally.

Sugar Science
Remember those colorful taste maps? They were wrong about where on the tongue it happens, but right about what happens. It’s a twisty neural journey, but here are the bullet points.
When we eat or drink something sweet, glucose molecules bind to taste receptors on our tongues.
When glucose binds to a complex of specific receptors which trigger cells to produce a proteins and calcium ions, which stimulate a neural response.
Sensory neurotransmitters in our mouths, throat, and face send the memo to our brains, where it lands in the gustatory cortex of our frontal lobe.
The brain interprets the signal as "sweetness," associating it with the presence of an energy-rich molecule, such as glucose.
We need energy to function. Our bodies are programmed via the release of dopamine to feel pleasure when we experience sweetness.
Scent Science
Scent science works similarly to taste. The main difference is that there are fewer steps to interpreting smells.
Scent molecules go straight the olfactory cortex, which is part of the limbic system, the oldest most primal part of our brain that also controls memory, emotion, and our fight or flight instincts. That’s why scent can provoke such instant and powerful responses. Want to go deeper? Check out this video.
Taste and Smell
You’ve probably heard that our sense of taste is directly related to our sense of smell.
A simple test is to hold your nose next time you take a bit of something. When doing this experiment, you may notice that that if you let go too soon, you might still get a faint taste. That is due to a very fancy process called retro-nasal olfaction.
In addition to our noses, we also receive scent molecule messages from the back of our throats, which sparks another great wine tasting debate: spit or swallow.
I’ll save that hot topic for a future issue.
This means that a lot of wines seem sweet, because they actually smell very sweet. Because our bodies are programmed to go after get sweetness, we pick up on it immediately.
What about actual sugar in wine?
Wine comes from grape juice, and fermentation requires sugar. Of course, even the driest wines will still contain some.
The average dry wine contains around 6 grams of sugar per liter. That translates to 4.5 grams per bottle (750 ml), which is just over a teaspoon (4 grams).
A generous American pour is about five ounces (150 ml). That translates to 0.9 grams of sugar (35 calories) in a glass of dry wine.
Cross multiplication came in handy for this section! Do they still teach that in schools?
Skip the math
The simplest way to tell if a wine is sweet or dry is to compare it to something undoubtedly sweet, like soda. I used Sprite in this video. For comparison, Sprite has about 30 grams of sugar per liter.
That’s Moscato-level. Swish it around in your mouth and swallow. You’ll certainly notice the difference.
Sugar on Wine Labels
There is much deliberation around nutritional labeling on wine.
For now, sparkling wines, especially, classic-method wines like Champagne, are the only style of wine that explicitly label their bottles with a sweetness level.
The process of producing sparkling wines includes a second fermentation, and fermentation requires sugar. Winemakers often adjust the quality of aroma, flavors in the wine before bottling.
Very dry sparkling wine can be refreshing, but also one-dimensional. Once fermentation is over and the wines have aged, winemakers remove the lees (yeast) and add some extra juice- often their own secret blend of base wines to create balance and harmony.
They’re able to measure sugar content in the winery, and express it on labels like brut or extra brut, which sparkling wine lovers appreciate. You can too!
Read more about the history of Champagne here.
What exactly does ‘dry’ mean?
First and foremost, a dry wine is not sweet. Beyond that, a dry wine may also create a sense of dryness or pulling on your palate.
Imagine biting into an unripe apple or pear, or sipping strong, black tea.
These are tannins, and that’s an article for another day (or a video for right now). Tannins come from the seeds and skins of the grapes. They add textural dimension and even act as natural preservatives to some degree.
For our purposes of enjoying wine and food together, the drying sensation of tannins balances out creamy, soupy, unctuous (oily) textures in food.
This clears the weight from your palate so that fuller flavors will emerge (taste…fully!), creating a more harmonious multi-sensory experience.
If you’re still confused, drop me a question in the comments. In the meantime, take a moment to more fully taste your next glass of wine, be it sweet or dry. The more you know, the more you love.