Chaptalization is a common place practice everywhere now and in the past. Nothing new here!
You mean like being from a hot vintage like 2022?
Gross
A different question is how has climate change impacted the use of chaptalization in Burgundy? I’d assume it’s much less called upon now.
A friend of mine contends that the brown sugar note you get in some 1970s and older red burgundies are an indicator of chapitalization. I’ve never been convinced of that, but its a good of an explanation as any I’ve heard on the origin of that taste.
For me, the aromatic tell of heavy chaptalization, in so far as there is one, (it tends to show with a bit of age) is more reminiscent of marmalade.
Brown sugar notes in older red Burgundies is more likely due to a bit of botrytis in the mix.
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Correct.
As long as the sugar is converted to alcohol, I don’t think there is much you can taste. My question is if it isn’t? Grapes contain fructose which with presence of a keto group, has a faster formation of a Maillard reaction compared to glucose, which is usually what is added for Chaptalization.
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I know very little about chaptalization. What is the sugar that is used?
I know a California winery that used C&H white sugar from Costco. The winemaker told me so.
Fascinating. I wonder if I’m Burgundy this is the same - beet sugar?
I ask because, when I worked on non-alcoholic wine formulation, I spent a good bit of time vetting sugars and concentrates, and it is hard to find a perfectly neutral sugar. I’m sure this impact would be modified by chaptalization, and unsure exactly how, but I’m not surprised to hear from William that the sensory impact is (a) not the same from wine to wine depending on how it is done, (b) not always evident, and (c) sometimes evident. Like pretty much any winemaking tool.
To me it feels just like the other side of the coin that is adding water to musts, which is done by wineries of all quality levels here in California, and I’d be amazed if anyone could ever really tell
There are tales of supermarkets in wine growing regions selling out of ordinary granulated sugar after a poor growing season.
People are incredibly inconsistent in their ability to taste, if anyone has been in a group that does blind tasting and varies the themes it becomes overwhelmingly evident. If you lined up 10 wines and 4 were the same wine I would be willing to bet many people would not be able to tell which wines were identical. There are some fantastic tasters who I am sure can pick out these things, but even those as initiated as us are generally speaking probably pretty inconsistent, there are just too many variables.
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Guessing the grape varietal is often a challenge. We blind taste a lot down here and it’s humbling.
See point 1 that I made above re. changing fermentation duration and thus maceration, plus glycerol…
Also, it isn’t pure saccharose. Semi-refined cane sugar, or sucre de canne roux, contains interesting impurities (manoproteins, tannins, amino acids, etc).
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White beet sugar, white cane sugar, and semi-refined cane sugar are the three options. Michel Bettane recently described the partisans of the latter as “snobs”, but I confess that I am to be counted among their number.
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Back in the 80s and 90s, I came on some Burgundies that were strangely full-bodied although the fruit flavors seemed a little underripe and the color was very light. I suspected those had been chaptalized. But there wasn’t a taste tell – it was the disconnect between the flavors and the body.
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A “burnt Barolo-like bite” on the finish sounds more like tannin and high acid than chaptalization, with perhaps some flavors resulting from the very hot dry 2022 summer in Burgundy.
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Interesting. I can see that. In my formulation work I had a strong preference for cane sugar (brighter, fresher) over beet sugar (a little dull and muddy). For my part, I was looking for something as clean as possible. The semi-refined stuff I can see being nice but also imparting more of its own character, perhaps in a desirable way?
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Oh for sure. That said, I’ve blinded a lot of people on beet sugar vs cane sugar additions and they have pretty much always (a) noticed the difference in triangle tests and (b) expressed a preference for cane sugar
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