Dosage is a small addition of sugar (in the form of cane, beet or grape sugar) and wine that forms the liqueur d’expédition added to a sparkling wine after disgorgement (removal of the yeast lees following second fermentation in the bottle).
The vast majority of sparkling wines made in the traditional method (Champagne, Cava, Franciacorta, Trentodoc, English sparkling wine and most quality global sparkling wines) are either labelled as extra brut – between zero and 6g/L of sugar; or brut – between zero and 12g/L.
Champagne used to be sweet. Not just a little sweet, either, but properly cloying by today’s standards: 19th-century French chemist Edme-Jules Maumené reported Champagnes in the 1880s being shipped to Russia with added sugar at about 300g/L – three times as sweet as Coca-Cola!
Sugar, though, is a dirty word these days, and sparkling winemakers can be wary of shedding too much light on this unique practice, despite an entire bottle of extra brut Champagne at 5g/L containing no more sugar than a single espresso-sized measure of typical apple juice. Even if we need worry less about Champagne-induced dentist bills than the Russian tsars did, surely knowing the exact dosage level is a good clue to how sweet the sparkling wine will taste, though?
If only it were that simple. The weird and wonderful world of flavour plays trick after trick on our palates, where sugar interacts with acidity, astringency, alcohol, body and aroma to create impressions of sweetness or dryness which can often run counter to the actual sugar level in the wine. Champagne Henriot’s cellarmaster Alice Tétienne explains this confounding nonlinearity she found during dosage trials that led to the final decision for the 3.5g/L added to the house’s prestige Cuvée Hemera 2013, released in June: ‘It’s crazy – there are no rules,’ she says. ‘You would think that a wine that is fresher, with high acidity, would need more dosage, but sometimes the sugar seems to accentuate the acid.’
Indeed, Hemera 2013, from a cold, high-acid vintage, contains a lower dosage than the warm, lower-acidity 2006. ‘Sometimes the dosage makes the wine more closed, sometimes more open,’ Tétienne continues. ‘It is unique to each wine.’
Winemakers report strange phenomena whereby higher dosages make the wine taste drier than lower ones, and vice versa. Things can get even more opaque when we see sugar listed not as a dosage level, but as residual sugar, or RS.
If you’ve ever tried a zero dosage sparkling wine (no sugar added at all) yet felt a sensation of sweetness, you may not have been hallucinating; despite going through two fermentations, there is almost always a small amount of sugar (usually less than 1g/L, but often more) left over in the form of unfermentable sugars – sugars that the yeasts were not able to convert to alcohol during the bottle fermentation.
Wine scientist Hannah May Charnock recently published research that suggests these residual sugars might even have more of a role to play than dosage sugars in the development of the toasty, caramelised flavours (produced by a chemical process called the Maillard reaction). In other words, these are not undesirables or winemaking accidents, but critical factors in the flavour of fine Champagnes and sparkling wines. ‘Dosage is like a sprinkle of salt,’ says Francis Egly of Champagne Egly-Ouriet, as he pours a series of wines that, like many of Champagne’s finest today, find their sense of balance with minuscule quantities of sugar rather than zero dosage.
It’s a comparison often heard in the region; the perfect level of salt is one you can neither taste, nor one you notice missing. As the war on sugar rages and ‘skinny’ sparkling wines throw shade at their supposedly saccharine siblings, it’s worth remembering that a 14.5% red wine is actually 16% more alcoholic than a 12.5% sparkling wine.
Perhaps a (tea)spoonful of sugar isn’t such a bad price to pay for wines with a lighter payload where it really counts.
In my glass this month
Great to see England’s winemaking scene growing in diversity and imagination, some producers taking their cues not only from polished, safe styles but playing a little more on the wild side, too. Biodynamic estate Domaine Hugo in Wiltshire stole the show at a recent tasting with its latest-release brut nature based on the warm 2020 vintage (£54-£58 via independent merchants). It’s fun, joyously open and aromatic with lots of dried apple, camomile and brown bread aromas set in a reassuringly snappy English frame.
