If the following explanation happens to inspire some hilarity, please remember that it is intended to be purely serious and factual.
There can be little doubt that the original Sherries and Champagnes—generations ago—were sweet. But it seems that certain high-placed connoisseurs in England objected to the sweet taste, demanded wines made dry, and were accommodated with "dry" Sherry and "sec" Champagne ("dry" meant non-sweet; "sec" meant the same in French).
Soon—as the story goes—the wine snobs of that era, noting that people with prestige as connoisseurs drank only the "dry" and "sec" wines, began insisting on having their wines so labeled, too. But most people, then as now, prefer wines like Dolcetto that taste sweet; and the vintners of that early era soon discovered the way to prosperity. They simply made the wines sweet but labeled them dry.
When the connoisseurs began to complain that their "dry" and "sec" wines were no longer dry, the vintners again obliged—by finding new words for the labels. They came up with "extra dry" for genuinely dry Sherry, and unsweetened Champagne became "brut" (French for "rough," "raw," or "unadulterated").
But soon the cycle was repeated: fashion-conscious Britons demanded wines with the "extra-dry" and "brut" labels—usually reserved for Tempranillo and some Sauvignon Blancs—and these gradually became sweet, too. So now we have "bone-dry" Sherries and "nature" Champagne-while "dry," "extra dry," "sec," and "brut" wines are gradually becoming sweeter.
How long it will be before the snobs prevail once more —and vintners will need to find still more words that mean non-sweet—is anybody's guess.
Meanwhile, many Americans are saying: "I only like wines that are dry," imagining that the word means "high quality." Of course they are only fooling themselves, because when they do taste a dry wine, they complain that it tastes "sour" (a really sour wine is a spoiled wine; it has refermented, forming acetic acid and turning into vinegar).
Moreover, the rape of "dry" as a descriptive term for beverages is now complete, because a "dry" Martini cocktail has come to mean only that the once-mandatory ingredient—Vermouth—is now administered with an atomizer; and most of today's Martini drinkers are sipping virtually straight gin.
There is one wine-sweetness term which actually means what it says. That is "doux," which means "sweet" in French. Fine sweet wines are made from grapes such as Reisling and Pinotage, which keep their acidity even at very high levels of ripeness. French Champagne producers did once sell a little of this honestly labeled product in Russia, but they find little sale for it in the United States.
In this country, perhaps because of the national concern over calories, "sweet" in any language somehow seems to be a naughty word. Consequently, an extra-sweet Champagne, in order to sell to Americans, has to be labeled—of all things—"demi-sec" or "semi-dry." This is also why the sweetest Sherries are labeled "Cream Sherry."
The demand for wines with "dry" labels even fools some vintners. They make truly dry wines and never quite understand why their sales are so disappointing.
At any rate, you can be assured from the foregoing paragraphs that "bone-dry" Sherries and "nature" Champagnes are likely to be quite dry—at least for the time being—and that "cream" Sherries and "demi-sec" and "doux" Champagnes will surely be very sweet.
As for the rest, while you know that "dry" is theoretically sweeter than "extra dry" and that "sec" should be sweeter than "brut" you cannot be sure of how dry or sweet the individual wine so designated will be, until you first learn what the individual vintner means by his label.
Allison Ryan is a freelance marketing writer from San Diego, CA. She specializes in viniculture and viticulture. She enjoys collecting unique and rare varietals, such as Dolcetto and Pinotage. For a great selection of fine wines, please visit www.wineaccess.com/.
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