Every wine, from bone dry to dessert.
Free interactive wine sweetness chart: 28 wines placed from bone dry to dessert with residual sugar ranges, colour filters, and a find-your-level control.
- Brut Nature Champagne Zero dosage: no sweetening added after the bubbles. under 3 g/l
- Fino Sherry Saline, pale and about as dry as wine gets.
- Chablis Steely unoaked Chardonnay from cool Burgundy.
- Sauvignon Blanc Grassy and sharp; the acidity makes it taste extra dry.
- Pinot Grigio Light, neutral and reliably dry in the Italian style.
- Albariño Salty Atlantic white from Rías Baixas, fully dry.
- Cabernet Sauvignon Firm tannin and dark fruit; the sugar is long gone.
- Pinot Noir Silky red berries; fruity is not the same as sweet.
- Merlot Plush texture that reads soft, never sugary.
- Malbec Ripe and jammy on the nose, dry on the palate.
- Shiraz Rich, peppery and technically bone dry.
- Dry rosé Provence-style pink: paler and drier than it looks.
- Dry Riesling Trocken on a German label promises this style.
- Prosecco Brut The driest of the common Prosecco styles. up to 12 g/l
- Prosecco Extra Dry Confusingly, a step sweeter than Brut. 12 to 17 g/l
- Gewürztraminer Lychee and rose petal; often carries a little sugar.
- Vouvray demi-sec Chenin Blanc with a honeyed middle. roughly 15 to 30 g/l
- Kabinett Riesling Delicate German style: gentle sweetness, electric acidity. roughly 20 to 50 g/l
- White Zinfandel Californian pink: strawberries and cream. roughly 30 to 45 g/l
- Lambrusco Amabile Grapey, frothy, medium-sweet red fizz.
- Moscato d'Asti Gently sparkling, low alcohol, unashamedly sweet. roughly 100 to 130 g/l
- Brachetto d'Acqui Sweet red fizz with a weakness for chocolate.
- Port Fortified mid-ferment so the grape sugar stays. roughly 80 to 120 g/l
- Sauternes Botrytised Sémillon: apricot, honey, marmalade. roughly 120 to 160 g/l
- Tokaji 5 Puttonyos Hungary's amber classic, cut by fierce acidity. at least 120 g/l
- Ice wine Pressed from grapes frozen on the vine. roughly 160 to 220 g/l
- Rutherglen Muscat Australia's treacly fortified Muscat. roughly 180 to 250 g/l
- Pedro Ximénez Sherry Essentially pourable raisin syrup. often above 400 g/l
Positions are textbook-typical for each style; individual producers wander. Residual sugar figures are honest ballparks, not lab results.
Find where your own palate sits
Rate a few bottles in Sommo and it learns the sweetness you actually reach for, then scores restaurant lists against your taste.
Download freeSweet is not the same as fruity
The single most common tasting mix-up is calling a ripe wine sweet. A Barossa Shiraz smells of blackberry jam and a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc of passion fruit, yet both are technically bone dry: the yeast converted the grape sugar to alcohol, and what your nose reads as sweetness is aroma. Sweetness, properly speaking, is only what the tip of your tongue detects, and this chart places 28 well-known wines by that measure alone. If a dry wine keeps tasting sweet to you, what “dry” actually means is worth five minutes.
Why “dry” confuses everyone
Dry simply means not sweet, which would be easy if labels cooperated. They do not. Prosecco Extra Dry is sweeter than Prosecco Brut, a hangover from nineteenth-century naming. Vouvray demi-sec, literally half dry, is comfortably off-dry. German Riesling runs from Trocken (dry) through Kabinett (gently sweet) to dessert wines, all under one grape; the Riesling versus Chardonnay comparison shows how differently the two behave. And for those who want sugar with their tannin, there is a whole family of sweet red wines from Lambrusco to Recioto.
How residual sugar is measured
Residual sugar, the g/l figures on the chart, is the grape sugar left after fermentation, in grams per litre. In a dry wine the yeast finishes the job, leaving under 10 g/l, often under 2. Sweet wines interrupt it: Port is fortified with spirit mid-ferment so the sugar survives, Sauternes concentrates sugar through noble rot before fermentation begins, and ice wine presses frozen berries so only sugary juice runs. Perception muddies the numbers, because acidity masks sugar: a Kabinett Riesling at 40 g/l can taste fresher than a flabby white at 15. That balancing act between sugar and acid is half of wine structure; the tannin, acidity and body chart covers the other half.
Where the exam meets the chart
Judging sweetness is one of the first calls a wine student learns to make: dry, off-dry, medium, sweet, in that order, before anything else on the palate. It is also one of the first questions to appear when you try a WSET Level 1 mock test. Work along the chart from left to right with a glass in hand and the scale stops being theory rather quickly.
Frequently asked.
01.What is the driest type of wine?+
02.Is Riesling a sweet wine?+
03.What does residual sugar mean?+
04.Why is Extra Dry Prosecco sweeter than Brut?+
05.Which red wines are sweet?+
A chart is a start. Your palate is the map.
Sommo learns the sweetness you actually reach for, scores restaurant lists against it, and remembers every bottle that landed exactly right.