Know your Wine Terminology: Semi-Dry and Semi-Sweet

Wine has its own vocabulary describing tastes, styles, methods, processes, and a myriad of other topics. We've already covered Dry and Sweet wines, but this time, we cover the middle ground (and in wine, there's ALWAYS a middle ground): Semi-Dry and Semi-Sweet wines.

Sweetness in wines usually comes in the form of residual sugar. This is sugar that has not been converted to alcohol in the fermentation process, either because the the alcohol level became so high that the yeast was killed off, or because the wine maker introduced chemicals to kill stop the fermentation early. As covered before, when there is no residual sugar, or very little, the wine is considered Dry. If there is a large amount of residual sugar, then the wine is considered Sweet.

But, there a range between Dry and Sweet. Wines in this range may be called Semi-Dry or Semi-Sweet. In the US at least, there is no standardized rule when a wine is called Semi-Dry vs. Semi-Sweet, but in general a Semi-Sweet wine should taste sweeter than a Semi-dry wine.

Other countries have other terms for Dry, Semi-Dry, Semi-Sweet, and Sweet.

	Dry	Semi-Dry/Semi-Sweet	Sweet
France	Sec	Demi-Sec	Doux/Moelleux
Spain	Seco	Semi-Seco	Dulce
Italy	Secco	Semi-secco	Dolce

   
Most of these countries use the English equilvalent of Semi-Dry to describe wines in the middle of the road. In the States, Semi-Dry and Semi-Sweet are both used with varying degrees of frequency.

There are other ways that sweetness can be added, which is somewhat common in Midwestern wines. For instance, Honey Wines and Fruit wines are popular. These wines are not traditional wines, as they contain fruits other than Grapes, so legally they cannot be called just 'wine'. These drinks, sweetened by honey or the additional fruit added to the grapes, often fall into the Semi-Sweet spectrum of wines. So when shopping for wines in the Midwest, you'll often find the wines to be be in this land between Dry and Sweet.