Wine has its own vocabulary describing tastes, styles, methods, processes, and a myriad of other topics. This time, I cover one of the basic descriptions of a wine: Dry.
Dry wines are the opposite of sweet. Their chief characteristic is that they are made from with very little sugar. They tend to have more alcohol, as the fermentation process is allowed to continue until nearly all of the sugar has been converted to alcohol. While a wine can't be 'Dry' since it is a liquid, the dryness here refers to the way the wine feels and not so much how it tastes.
Dry wines are commonly called for in cooking. Though remember the adage: never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink. (And speaking of cooking, the old's wife's tale that all the alcohol will burn off during cooking is just that: an old's wife's tale.)
Personally, I'm not a big fan of dry wines. Part of it is that these wines feel awkward on my tongue and in a way does feel dry. They certainly leave my mouth craving sugar to balance out the taste. Perhaps its due to a poor food pairing on my part. Dry wines should be kept away from sweet foods. Salty foods are a better match, but much depends on the style of the wine and the style of the food chosen.
Sweet grapes are grown in warmer climates where the fruit has more time to ripen. So in the Midwest, with a more temperate environment, grapes tend to have less sugar in them from the start. Dry wines are common in the Midwest, though semi-sweet wines are more in style.
My guess is that Dry wines are not more popular in the United States is due to the overall sweetness of our diets. We are used to eating sweet foods and sweet drinks, so a non-sweet drink like a dry wine tastes odd. Perhaps its time to start bucking that perception and for you and I to try drier wines more often. Perhaps we'll find a bottle or two that we like.
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