[Sca-cooks] sugar substitute for wine making?

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Sue Clemenger:
>I don't *think* so...AFAIK, they just taste sweet.  Something like
>Nutrasweet (isn't that the one that's got the same calories as sugar but
>is many, many times sweeter) might theoretically work, but that might
>make your beverage unpalatably sweet.
>I don't recall adding sugar to the wine I've made--think the
>yeast-beasties live off the natural sugars in the ingredients.
>--maire

This post sort of brings out some ambiguities in the original
question. Now, I'm really not sure what fermentation process we're
talking about here.

Are we talking about some kind of priming sugar, as for a carbonated
wine like Champagne (for example), or the actual, fermentable sugar
(either naturally occurring in the fruit or added) that provides the
basis for fermentation. If you're talking about priming sugar (just
in case), I believe Digby mentions putting a raisin or two in each
bottle to prime/carbonate the bottle.

If you're just talking about a completely sugar-free wine, well,
that's going to be a problem. Wine is fermented, and yeasts eat
sugar. The whole point (oversimplified, perhaps, but by and large) of
artificial sweeteners is that they are _not_ a food per se; often
they cannot be metabolized at all, but still taste sweet. I can't
think of a sugar substitute that can be metabolized by yeasts but not
by the human body. Sugar in wine also provides most of the mouth feel.

I think, in the end, after all the effort you'd have to go to, and
still get something not quite recognizable as wine, you'd be better
off drinking small quantities of very dry wine, like a brut
champagne. And this with the previously stated caveat that diabetics
probably ought to be careful with alcohol as well.

Adamantius

--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER