Sweet addition

The Romans had two ways of increasing alcohol levels in wine. They would either harvest grapes after a late frost that concentrated the sugars—or they would reduce the water content by boiling the wine in lead vessels. (Well, yes, it created quite a health hazard, but the lead vessel, intriguingly, imparted a sweetness to the wine.)

These methods fell into disuse with the decline of the Western Roman Empire. The Dark Ages concentrated on making good local wines, with alcohol levels reflecting the varietals and location where the grapes were grown. If a more potent wine were required, the winemaker would delay harvest so as to increase the sugars in the fruit and thereby provide more raw material to turn into alcohol. By the 12th century, religious orders were producing exceptional wines in the monasteries in France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. From then on, alcohol levels generally reflected the brix of the fruit at harvest.

But there was another way to add sugar into the mix. The discovery and subsequent colonization of the Americas by the Europeans gave rise to a slave trade that allowed England, Spain, France, Holland and Denmark to receive cones of cane sugar—which could be added to wine. When France lost their Haitian Colony because of the successful slave revolt and a British blockade, Napoleon dispatched some of his scientists to Prussia to investigate the possibility of using sugar beets. Among those scientists was Jean-Antoine Chaptal, who was familiar with the French practice of adding sugar to wine, as first recorded in 1777. And, it was he who advocated the use of sugar to strengthen and preserve wine.

“Chaptalization” has had a chequered history ever since. In 1840, Germany experienced a difficult year with frightful weather that prevented the grapes from ripening. So they employed Chaptal’s method in order to produce wine that year. At the turn of the 20th century, winemakers in Languedoc violently protested the addition of sugar to wine in France—it was flooding the market with poor quality wine, while also depressing prices. Laws were passed in France, as a result, to limit the quantities of sugars allowed in making wine.

In the rest of the European Union, the amount of chaptalization is dependent on the growing zone. Countries such as Austria, Australia, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal and South Africa do not allow chaptalization. New Zealand, Chile, China, Canada, Switzerland, certain regions in France and some of the northern United States allow chaptalization. (California prohibits the addition of sugar, but will allow the use of grape concentrates.) In jurisdictions where chaptalization is permitted, cane sugar is preferred.