What is a Sweet Red Wine

If you've been wondering exactly what is a sweet red wine, here are a few answers for your burning questions.

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Well, yes and no. In the world of wine, the word sweet isn't the same as sweet like candy. There are a few red wines that are definitely on the sweet side, but traditionally, a sweeter red wine is fruity rather than sweet. So, to answer the question, what is a sweet red wine, let's take a look at a few lighter and fruitier red wines and their corresponding characteristics.

Wine made from fruit like strawberries or blueberries are sweet and light in both body and flavors. Here are a few selections for you to consider:

• Strawberry wine – You can find wine made from 100% strawberries or strawberry wine mixed with other flavors like peach and grape. A healthy amount of sugar is added to the strawberries during the wine making process. The end result is a very sweet, light and fruity wine. Perfect for dessert after a wonderful meal.
• Fragolino sparkling wine – This red wine is made from the Fragola grape. This particular type of grape has dominate strawberry flavors that lends itself well to this sweet "frizzante" wine.
• Blueberry wine – Wine made from this summer berry is sweet with a little bit of tangy zing.

The following wines aren't sweet like the fruit wines. They are generally light bodied with forward fruit flavors:

• Lambrusco – This Italian wine is best served chilled and has fresh picked blackberry and plumb flavors. The fact that this wine is best served chilled makes it a perfect picnic or barbeque wine.
• Beaujolais – French and fruty, the lightest and sweetest Beaujolais is Beaujolais Nouveau. The Nouveau is officially released the third Thursday of every November and is meant to be drunk when young.

The sweetest of any types of red wine are the ports. Port is wine that is fortified, (usually with brandy) and makes a perfect after dinner drink. Here are the basic types of port:

• Ruby – These are the youngest of the ports. Ruby ports don't tend to spend a lot of time in a cask so they are bright garnet in color and have intense, forward fruit flavor characteristics.
• Tawny – These are aged longer and are less sweet than the Ruby. Tawny ports are amber in color due to the time it spends casked. These ports tend to take on a nutty flavor rather than a bright fruit flavor.
• Vintage – These aged ports are the least sweet of the bunch, losing their bright fruit flavor characteristics and taking on more smooth and mellow flavors as they age.

Hopefully, the above mentioned descriptions and flavor characteristics have provided an acceptable answer to the question "What is a sweet red wine?" Sweetness, like everything else in the world of wine, is subjective. Here are a few final tips to keep in mind the next time you're shopping for a bottle of sweet red:

• Aim for fruity – If a wine description says something like "bright, forward fruit flavors", then you can bet it's a sweet red wine. Remember, sweet in the wine world isn't the same as sweet in the dessert world.
• Go for youth – Young wines are lighter, fruitier and therefore sweeter than aged wines.
• Try a dessert wine – If you can't seem to satisfy your sweet wine tooth with a red, there are many white dessert wines available that will do the trick. Look for a Muscat, Muscadelle or anything that has "Late Harvest" on the label.
• Get a blush – Okay, blush wines aren't red, they're pink but they all tend to be sweet.
• Try to steer clear of dry wines – Generally, the drier a wine, the less sweet it tastes. This is why some sweet red wines are referred to as "off dry."

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