Sweet White Wine Chart: 8 Styles From Off-Dry to Dessert

Sweet white wine runs from a Riesling with just enough sugar to calm a Thai curry to a Sauternes thick enough to stand in for dessert. The grape rarely tells you which end you are buying, because Riesling, Chenin Blanc and Furmint are all made both dry and sweet. The sweetness word on the label does, and so does the way the grapes kept their sugar.

What Counts as a Sweet White Wine, in One Paragraph?

Under EU labelling law, a still wine counts as sweet once it holds at least 45 grams of residual sugar (grape sugar the yeast left unfermented) per litre. Below that line it is medium up to 45 grams, medium dry up to 12, and dry up to 4. Two of those limits move with acidity (the tartness that makes your mouth water). A wine with enough acid may carry 9 grams and still say dry, or 18 and still say medium dry, because acid makes sugar taste less sweet. In a shop, a sweet white is anything from medium dry to syrupy.

Sweet White Wine Chart: Eight Styles From Off-Dry to Dessert

Eight styles cover the range, ordered from just-sweet to syrupy. The first rung is off-dry (a trade word for a wine with a little sugar you can just taste), and the last three are true dessert wines.

Style	Main grape	How it stays sweet	How sweet it tastes	Pick this if
Off-dry Riesling (halbtrocken, feinherb)	Riesling	Fermentation stopped with a little sugar left	Just sweet; sharp acid makes it read almost dry	Dinner has chilli heat: Thai, Sichuan, Indian
Off-dry Gewürztraminer	Gewürztraminer	Very ripe grapes, some sugar left	Lightly sweet, lychee and rose, softer acid	The food carries ginger or warm spice
Vouvray demi-sec or moelleux	Chenin Blanc	Riper or later-picked grapes, sugar left	Off-dry to medium sweet, baked apple and honey	Roast pork with fruit, or a cheese course
Moscato d'Asti	Moscato Bianco	Juice chilled almost to freezing to stop the yeast	Clearly sweet but light: 4.5 to 6.5% alcohol, gently fizzy	Lunch outside, brunch or a fruit salad
Riesling Spätlese or Auslese (no trocken)	Riesling	Later-picked, riper grapes	Medium to sweet, peach and lime, sharp acid	Fruit desserts, or a sweet-and-sour main
Sauternes	Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscadelle	Noble rot shrivels the grapes	Very sweet, apricot, honey, marmalade	Blue cheese or an apricot tart
Tokaji Aszú	Furmint, Hárslevelű	Noble-rot berries	Very sweet, apricot and orange peel, sharp acid	Fruit tarts, or a glass on its own
Ice wine (Eiswein)	Riesling and other hardy grapes	Grapes frozen on the vine	Intensely sweet and tart at once	The wine is the dessert

If dinner has chilli heat, pick from the top two rows: a little sugar softens the burn, and Riesling's acid keeps the glass fresh. If the wine is the dessert, or arrives with blue cheese, pick from the bottom three. For a warm afternoon, Moscato d'Asti gives clear sweetness at 4.5 to 6.5% alcohol. Off-dry wine by country covers the first rungs in more depth.

Quick check

One question on what you just read

Riesling and Chenin Blanc are made both dry and sweet. What best tells you how sweet a bottle is?

AThe grape name on the labelBThe sweetness word on the labelCThe vintage year

Tap an answer to see how you did.

How Do You Tell If a White Wine Is Sweet Before Buying?

Read the sweetness word first, then the alcohol. EU labels may print medium dry, medium or sweet, or the local word: halbtrocken or demi-sec for medium dry, lieblich or moelleux for medium, süß or doux for sweet. Many dessert wines print no sweetness word at all.

For those, the style words carry the signal: Late Harvest, Vendange Tardive, Spätlese, Auslese and the name Sauternes all point to sugar.

Alcohol is the back-up clue. Sugar the yeast did not eat never became alcohol, so among wines of the same grape, a lower alcohol figure usually means more sugar left. If a German Riesling shows no trocken and a low alcohol figure, expect it to taste sweet.

Retail charts disagree about where off-dry ends, and only the EU words are legal limits. Trust the label word over a shop's chart. The wine sweetness scale sets every term side by side in grams per litre, and how to read a wine label shows where each word sits on the bottle.

Is Riesling Always Sweet?

No. Riesling is made bone dry, off-dry and lusciously sweet, and on a German label the word trocken (dry) marks the dry ones. The confusion comes from the Prädikat words (Germany's ripeness grades): Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese, in rising order.

Those grades measure grape ripeness on the day of picking, not the sugar left in the bottle. Wine Spectator calls it must weight, the amount of sugar in the grapes at harvest. A winemaker can pick at Spätlese ripeness and ferment the juice almost dry, so the finished sweetness "might not exactly correspond" to the grade. Eiswein sometimes slots in between Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese.

If the label pairs a Prädikat with trocken, the wine is dry. With halbtrocken or feinherb, it is off-dry. With neither, expect sweetness that usually climbs with the grade. The full ladder is in the Prädikat classification guide, and the grape's dry side is in the Riesling wine guide.

What Food Goes With Sweet White Wine?

Pour a wine at least as sweet as the food, and let its acidity work against salt, fat and chilli. When the dessert is sweeter than the wine, the wine tastes sour and thin. Match by what is on the plate:

• Chilli heat. Off-dry Riesling or Gewürztraminer. Sugar softens the burn, and Riesling's moderate alcohol does not fan it. More dishes are in wine with spicy food.
• Salty blue cheese. Sauternes or Tokaji. Sweet and salty balance each other, and the wine's acid cuts the cheese's fat. Wine with blue cheese covers each cheese.
• Fruit tarts. Auslese, Tokaji or ice wine, whose sharp acid matches the fruit's own tang.
• Fresh fruit and light desserts. Moscato d'Asti, whose low alcohol and soft bubbles keep the end of a meal light.
• Fat with fruit. Roast pork with apples or duck with a fruit sauce takes a Vouvray moelleux, whose acid cuts the fat.

How Should You Serve Sweet White Wine?

Cold, in small pours. Chilling makes sugar taste less heavy, while a dessert wine near room temperature feels syrupy; how temperature affects wine taste explains why, and the serving temperature chart gives the range per style. Pour about half the usual glass of a dessert wine, since a few sips at the end of a meal are enough.

If the bottle is a dessert wine, buy a small one. Sauternes and ice wine are often sold in half bottles.

Why Is Some White Wine Sweet?

Sweetness is grape sugar the yeast never turned into alcohol. It is the grape's own sugar, not sugar stirred into the finished wine. The route it takes past fermentation decides the style, from light and fizzy to thick and honeyed, and there are three:

• Stopped early. The winemaker halts fermentation while sugar remains, often by chilling the juice so the yeast stops working. Moscato d'Asti is made this way, which keeps its alcohol low.
• Concentrated on the vine. The berries lose water before picking, through noble rot, frost or a late harvest. The juice starts with so much sugar that plenty is left when fermentation ends. Sauternes, Tokaji and ice wine take this route.
• Dried after picking. Grapes rest on mats or racks for weeks or months until they shrivel, the method behind Italy's Vin Santo.

If you want light and fresh, choose the first route. If you want honeyed and deep, choose the second or third. The late harvest wine guide follows the gentlest version of the second route, grapes left longer on the vine.

Which Sweet Whites Are Light and Low in Alcohol?

Moscato d'Asti is the classic light sweet white: 4.5 to 6.5% alcohol, clearly sweet and gently fizzy. It comes from Moscato Bianco grapes in Piedmont. Producers chill the fermenting juice almost to freezing to halt the yeast. The rules require the finished wine to keep enough sugar to make at least 4.5% more alcohol, roughly 80 grams per litre.

The fizz is frizzante (lightly sparkling, softer than Champagne): carbon dioxide from that one short fermentation, with no second fermentation in the bottle. Moscato smells of peach, orange blossom and fresh grape, because Muscat is one of the few grapes whose wine smells of the grape itself. Drink it young and cold. Moscato wine covers the other Moscato styles, and Riesling vs Moscato sets the two sweet whites beginners meet first side by side.

What Is Noble Rot, and Which Wines Use It?

Noble rot is a fungus, Botrytis cinerea, that draws water out of ripe grapes and leaves their sugar and acid behind. The berries shrivel and turn brown-pink under a grey fuzz. They look ruined, but their juice is thick, sweet and still sharp. That acid is why the best botrytis wines taste less cloying than their sugar suggests.

Sauternes, from Bordeaux, is made from Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle. It smells of apricot, honey and orange marmalade, and the Sauternes wine guide covers its five villages and the 1855 classification.

Tokaji Aszú comes from Tokaj in north-east Hungary, where Furmint covers 60% of the vineyard area and Hárslevelű another 30%. Its label often carries a puttonyos number, a grade set by the sugar and other solids in the finished wine. A higher number means a sweeter wine. Furmint's dry side is in the Furmint wine guide, and the fungus itself is in noble rot, explained.

How Is Ice Wine Made?

Ice wine is pressed from grapes that froze while still on the vine. The water in each berry stays behind in the press as ice, so only a little thick, sugary juice runs out. The law sets the cold: minus 7 °C or colder in Germany, where the wine is called Eiswein, and minus 8 °C or colder in Canada.

The acid concentrates along with the sugar, so good ice wine tastes intensely sweet and tart at the same time. Pickers often work at night or at first light, and if the frost comes too late the grapes can rot before any ice wine is made. The grapes that freeze best are in the ice wine guide.

The red and fortified sweet styles are in dessert wine types, and the wine styles hub places sweet whites beside sparkling, rosé and fortified wine. The Sommy app at sommy.wine has a Wine 101 course and an AI-guided tasting mode that logs each glass. Chill a Riesling marked halbtrocken or feinherb for an hour tonight, then taste it beside something with chilli.

Sources

1. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/33, Annex III Part B: sugar content terms for still wine
2. Wine Spectator: What's the deal with the sweetness levels of German Riesling?
3. Italian Wine Central: Asti and Moscato d'Asti DOCG
4. Wikipedia: Ice wine
5. Wikipedia: Tokaji