[Sca-cooks] sugar substitute for wine making?

[Edouard de Bruyerecourt]

kattratt wrote:

>
> Wine is extremely high in sugar anyways since it is not processed as
> much as the harder alcohols like whiskey, vodka, etc.


Actually, different processes. For wine, yeast consumes the sugar and
produces alcohol, and will do so until either all the sugar is consumed,
the yeast is stopped, or the alcohol level rises above it's tolerance
(around 15-20% depending on the strain of yeast). That process is
fermentation. Harder alcohols are made by a process of distillation
which concentrates whatever alcohol is already prsent, most often by
evaporation and recondensing the alcohol, which may bring along some
trace flavours of the pre-distillate. If the pre-distillate was wine,
then the distilled alcohol is brandy. Most distilled alcohol is made
from fermented grains, without the intermediate beverage like wine or cidre.

How sweet a wine is depends on several things, being the amount of sugar
present to begin with and how long or how well the yeast is allowed to
ferment. The rough, ballpark estimate is for every 2% of sugar in the
must before fermentation, 1% of alcohol will be produced in the final
wine. Not exact, but close. If you started with a grape must with lower
sugar, say 20%, you could make a bone dry wine of around 10% alcohol
with no or only trace sugar left. Compare that with a rather sugary must
(say from a botrytis harvest) of 40%, with which the vintner could make
a potent wine of about 15% alcohol, but still with some 10% residual
sugar (this would be very sweet, a desert wine).

Wine tends to be made with varying levels of residual sugar because
that's how many people like it. There are very dry wines available
because other people like it that way. I don't have much of a sweet
tooth, so the wines I prefer tend to be very dry. Depending on the
distilled alcohol, it may be sweetened, or coloured with caramel, so the
wine=sweet/distilled alcohol=dry isn't always a reliable rule.

Ultimately, whether it's sugar or alcohol, it's still a carbohydrate,
which remains a concern for the diabetic or diet conscious. And given
that wine is around 10-15% alcohol, with perhaps 1-3% residual sugar,
while most distilled spirits are around the 40% alcohol level, the
spirit is a bigger risk to the diabetic ounce for ounce than the wine.

If I were to try winemaking for the diabetic, I would try to start with
as low a sugar level as I could, say between 5-10% and ferment it until
bone dry (keep the yeast warm, feed them well with other nutrients), to
keep the alcohol lower while removing as much as possible all the sugar.
Then add some artificial sweetener to taste. And consume modestly, as
there are still carbohydrates in the wine. If there is a way to reduce
the alcohol in wine by the home winemaker, I've never come across it.
I'm used to specific strains of yeast being used to make NA wine and
beer that produce very little alcohol.

Edouard