In oenology, chaptalization is the addition of sugar to the must, a technique used not to make the wine sweeter, but to increase its alcohol content, once the alcoholic fermentation has transformed it into ethanol. Cane sugar is the most used, but sucrose from other sources can also be used, such as beetroot or corn syrup.
Brief history of sugaring
Adding sugar to grape must has been part of the winemaking process since Roman times, who used honey as a sweetener. The Romans sought the greater sense of body given by sugar to wine, and to compensate for its acidity, which characterized oenology until the dawn of the 20th century. In 1801, while in Napoleon’s service, Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal began to advocate the technique as a means of strengthening and preserving wine, linking his name to chaptalization, known outside of Italy as “Chaptalization.” Around 1840, sugaring also spread to Germany, this time with the aim of compensating for the effects of bad weather on crops. The process, called Verbesserung (improvement) helped sustain wine production in the Moselle region during the most difficult years. At the beginning of the 20th century, the vignerons of Languedoc protested against the production of “artificial wines” which lowered the prices of local wine. In June 1907, large demonstrations pushed the government to send the army into the region, where demonstrators had burned the prefecture of Perpignan. In response to the protests, the French government increased sugar taxation and passed laws limiting the amount of sugar that could be added to wine.
The addition of sugar (sucrose) in wine is a practice prohibited in Italy, as well as in Spain, Portugal and Greece, but it is permitted and used in other European countries such as France, Germany, Austria, Poland, England, Hungary and others in the world. The addition is made to ‘help’ low-cost fine wines obtained from weak years or unripe grapes.
Sugars added to the must, including cane sugar, represent the easiest and least expensive solution compared to the addition of concentrated grape must – to ‘improve’ the structure of the wine and its alcoholic strength, where poor selection/pruning of the vines and/or climatic factors do not allow the harvesting of ripe grapes suitable for correct winemaking.
Thus, while in Italy and other southern European countries wines are made exclusively with the addition of grape must, in Nordic countries it is possible to use the cheaper refined sucrose from beetroot or cane. The imbalance in production costs generates unfair competition in the wine production of the internal market, to the obvious advantage of the countries of Central and Northern Europe. But not only. European consumers are deprived of the ability to distinguish wine produced from grapes versus wine ‘integrated with sugars’ as alcoholic beverages (>1.2% vol.) are exempt from having to include a list of ingredients and the nutritional table.