Alcohol Issues With The Taste Scale

By Dan Berger

I opened a bottle of Spanish Sherry the other day that had on its front label the words “Medium Dry.”

And this brought to mind a possible problem with the International Riesling Foundation’s taste scale, which has so far been seen as a great addition to the wine labels of numerous wineries around the world.

The term “Medium Dry” is, as we know, rather relative in that it is based on a relationship between the wine’s sugar and its acidity, with a pH adjustment factor added in.

In most cases this will work just fine. However, as I sipped this rather sweet Sherry, it dawned on me that we had a dilemma. That is, when using the Riesling taste scale, we have to assume a moderate alcohol level.

The Sherry, of course, was fortified, so its sugar and acid were hard to asertain since the alcohol was listed as 17%. Which is a lot more than most Rieslings will ever see.

But the alcohol level of Riesling is a concern when it comes to structural balance of a wine, and this relates as much to German wines as it does to Rieslings from other countries. It is a factor, too, for many other table wines.

It is well known that any table wine reaching high alcohol levels (I’d say 15% for white wines and 16% for reds are both a bit on the high side) can become a problem for the overall structure of the wine. High alcohol almost always leaves a wine with a sense of sweetness, even if no actual sugar is there.

With the alcohol levels in excellent Riesling typically low (in the 10% to 13% range in most cases), our IRF taste scale is quite workable. (Of course, the same exact wine would be radically different if one fraction was fermented to dryness at 13% and another portion of the same wine was reduced in alcohol to 10%, but that’s not a likely scenario.)

But if you take this issue to its most illogical conclusion, imagine that a wine maker, for reasons I won’t even dare to guess, chooses to pick his Riesling grapes at 26 degrees Brix, ferments the wine down to 1% residual surag (10 grams per liter), and then does not de-alcoholize the wine. And further let us assume there is a Riesling out there with sufficient acidity and a low enough pH to warrant being called medium dry on a technical basis.

If this wine has an alcohol level of, say, 15.5%, would it be seen as really “medium dry” by most tasters? I’m guessing this “chicken with three legs” would taste rather sweet, and be, at best, seen as medium sweet.

Clearly this is a curious wine and is not one that would command much attention by Riesling purists.

But the message of this week is that alcohol cannot be ignored in the grand scheme of things. And yet for the IRF to have factored alcohol into the taste scale would have made for a three-dimensional technical chart that would have caused more confusion than clarity.

As you think of the taste scale, remember that the unspoken fly in the ointment is the alcohol. We at the IRF are all fully aware of this dilemma, and may address the glitch in the future.

For now, we are seeing wineries around the world adopt the tasting scale for their labels and sales and marketing campaigns. And to that we say, hat’s off!