In the fall of 2009 and 2010, I started making Niagara grape wines with pressed juice from the Lake Erie wine region. In both cases, corn sugar was added to the juice to raise the must's potential alcohol to ~12% ABV. Both wines fermented to dry. I back sweeten 6 gallons of the 2009 wine with 8 ounces of cane sugar and bottled in April 2010. The results were great, producing a wonderful dry to off-dry wine that is my wife’s favorite grape wine to date.
The 2010 version will soon be ready for its final racking, stabilizing, back sweetening, a bit more bulk aging, and bottling. I am wondering how differently the wine would taste if I used corn sugar instead of cane sugar for back sweetening. The 2009 version turned out so good that I hate to “mess with success.” But as an engineer I never believed in the adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, rather, I subscribe to “just because it’s working, doesn’t mean it can’t be made to work even better.”
I would appreciate any experience with using corn sugar for back sweetening. Would it produce a consensus, less pleasant taste (albeit subjective), or just a different flavor?
Much thanks.
The 2010 version will soon be ready for its final racking, stabilizing, back sweetening, a bit more bulk aging, and bottling. I am wondering how differently the wine would taste if I used corn sugar instead of cane sugar for back sweetening. The 2009 version turned out so good that I hate to “mess with success.” But as an engineer I never believed in the adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, rather, I subscribe to “just because it’s working, doesn’t mean it can’t be made to work even better.”
I would appreciate any experience with using corn sugar for back sweetening. Would it produce a consensus, less pleasant taste (albeit subjective), or just a different flavor?
Much thanks.
