I’ve had several aged fairly highly rated aussie shirazes lately from the 1998 to 2001 vintage. Dead arm, st. henri, etc. With the bottle age and the tannins largely resolved, what I have noticed the most is that these are not as dry as one would expect. Some of these wines are wines i very much enjoyed young, like the 1998 Penfolds St. Henri. That said, I had a Barton Vale The Challenger and it was awesome and very dry while the Dead Arm was sweet and cloying. I am guessing Aussie shiraz simply has more residual sugars on average than many CA wines and most old world wines but these sugars are masked sometimes by tannins when young?
My questions:
Is that correct generally? Anyone know residual sugar data of most bordeaux or dry super tuscans versus Aussie shiraz?
Any other reasons that would seem to be the case? I drink most wines within 10-12 years from vintage and don’t drink many really aged wines. Maybe the Aussies, even these that are supposed to have longevity, are just aging faster because of the lower acidity?
I can’t speak to the underlying question of whether Aussie wines have more RS than other regions, but my gut reaction (and I have a prodigous gut) is that nothing about that place would lead to that result other than stylistic decisions. Certainly uber-ripe fruit can make wines that leave an impression of sweetness (higher alcohol plays a big part, and when paired with lavish fruit, “sweetness” can be perceived even though a wine is techinically dry), but that is a picking decision (abberant years aside).
But when you say “RS”, that really should mean wines with sugars above .06. A tiny amount of sugar below the level of perceived sweeetness (I think .06 is the normal perception threshold), but between .02 (legally dry) and .06, can absolutely “round out” the palate of a wine. We have a saying that “alcohol covers all manner of sins”. A tiny bit of RS can as well.
So, the first question is whether you discussing wines with RS that is perceptable (as in >.06) or wines that have a perception of sweetness, but not from perceptable RS?
Thanks for the response. I pulled some more recent vintage data on the Dead Arm and was surprised by the high variances in sugars. Below are the listed sugars(says Glucose+Fructose, not sure if there are others not included in this):
2002: .6 grams/L
2003: .2 grams/L
2004: .6 grams/L
2005: .8 grams/L
2006: .9 grams/L
Can’t find levels for older wines like the 2000. Not sure how the gram/L translates to normally quoted sugar levels or if those variances or sugar levels are normal versus CA syrah or Rhones, etc.
Wow, interesting rs numbers for those vintages of Dead Arm. The 2003 is dry. The 2002 and 2004 are dryish. They could show a bit sweet, or not depending on acidity. The 2005 and 2006? Man, that’s off dry territory, again depending on the acid. But that’s sweet.
What’s your unit of measurement there, Mr. Wizard?
Generally accepted perception levels of sweetness is about 0.5 g/100mL. Although there are differences- I can generally taste quite lower than that. So 0.5 g/100mL would be 5.0 g/L. If 0.2 g/100mL is generally accepted as physiologically dry (2.0 g/L). that would mean that all of the wines stated would be not only physiologically dry, but also under the perception level of sweetness. The highest number stated there is 0.9 g/L , which would translate to 0.09 g/100mL, well under physiological dryness and perception of sweetness.
Unless they are lying.
Yes. For example Reisling- very low pH generally, but even the sweet ones don’t taste that acidic. The Shiraz in question may have had a higher pH, or just the fruit gave the impression of sweetness.
At this level of RS, tasting the difference between them is going to be very hard. Typically in side by side comparisons people will be able to pick up differences of a couple g/L of sugar, but delineating between tenths of g/L is very difficult for the human tongue.
One other note, this is an important place to know whether or not the RS is evenly balanced between glucose and fructose, or primarily fructose. Fructose tastes about twice as sweet as glucose, even though its the same amount of sugar, so a wine that’s 0.8 g/L of fructose, might taste perceptibly sweet, while the same wine at 0.8 g/L split evenly between glucose and fructose may not.
Most yeasts prefer to use glucose over fructose, so if you have high brix grapes, there’s a good chance all the glucose is gone and the alcohol and glycerol production are pretty high, which in conjunction with the l/o fructose would give you a perceptibly sweet flavor… or maybe marketing and winemaking are on two different pages.
Those numbers have a decimal point (if correct) in front of them meaning they all have less than 1 gram of residual sugar/liter which means they are less the .1% residual sugar so they are completely dry if they were 6, 7, 8 or 9g/l than you would be able to taste the sweetness levels.
I’m not sure what your expectations were. To me a lot of Aussie wines have a sweet quality about them even young.
Following up on what other people have said here, I would guess the perception of sweetness is a function of several things – not only of any actual R.S. but also the acidity (probably low) plus the very ripe quality of the fruit, which can give a candied/cooked quality that suggests sweetness.
What Linda said on the sugars. .5%, or 5 g/L, is the generally given perception threshhold for RS, though it is different for everyone. All of those wines are plenty dry and I would think that impressions of sweetness for those wines were sooner due to ripeness and alcohol than to RS.
Mark, good point about the decimal. I also missed that this is glucose/fructose, not pentose and other unfermentable sugars that are often present in wine. I was going to say that it’s unlikely to see something at less than .1, but if it’s just glu/fru that might make sense.
Regarding sugar and acidity, I think of making lemonade. Start with very tart lemon juice. Add sugar. Taste. Still tart? Yes, but there’s sugar in there. You just can’t taste it yet because of the acid. Add more sugar. Gradually the liquid becomes “sweet” to the taste, long after there is measuable sugar in the solution. Wine’s a little like that.
Is it really possible to detect R.S. without reference to acidity? Years ago I went to a components tasting at a wine lab in Napa where they gave us multiple samples of the same wine with the sugar and acid adjusted to different levels. By playing with the acid alone – the R.S. unchanged – they could make the wine taste sweet or bone dry. It was very instructive.
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