Hello All,

I have been making some wine for my upcoming wedding, it is nearly ready to
bottle,

However I was wondering if there is a way of making the wine a little
sweeter at this stage and if so how would you recommend doing this.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards
Mike

Ray Calvert wrote:

> You need to stabilize the wine with sorbate and sulfite. An easy job.
> Just
> add them according to instructions. Usually sorbate is added 1/2 tsp per
> gal. This will prevent the wine from starting ferment in the bottle after
> you add the sugar. Then sweeten to taste with your choice of sweetener,
> usually sugar or honey. Take not of the acidity as well. Sweeter wines
> require a higher acidity. You may have to adjust the acidity by taste as
> well. If it tastes kind of flat after adding the sweetener, acid is the
> main culprit.
>
> Ray
>
> "Mike" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Hello All,
>>
>> I have been making some wine for my upcoming wedding, it is nearly ready
>> to bottle,
>>
>> However I was wondering if there is a way of making the wine a little
>> sweeter at this stage and if so how would you recommend doing this.
>>
>> any help would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Regards
>> Mike
>>

You may wish to consider Stevia which is sold at health food stores. It
will not ferment and a couple DROPS of the liquid form will sweeten a glass
of wine. I find that adding it at drinking time to be better for me than
adding prior to bottling. I have a dry pear wine that I sometimes will put
in a couple drops of Stevia and there are times that I like it bone dry.
By adding (or not) at drinking time, I have far better control at what
suits me at the moment.

I follow Ray's method of sweetening using regular table sugar. Never
tried them in wine, but most of the non-fermenting sweeteners have a
disagreeable flavor to me, even at low concentrations.

The only thing I would add to Ray's advice is to make sure you do bench
testing with small samples and then extrapolate to your fermenter's
volume. I try to get a few people together to taste several different
sweetened samples and then start tasting from unsweetened to sweeter
and sweeter, then have people vote on which sample was best. With a
Riesling a few weeks ago 4 of us actually agreed on the same sample as
being best. Amazing!