Skip to main content Chill out (no seriously, try this chilled) with ripe, fruity notes of raspberry, pomegranate and cherry in our Barefoot Sweet Red Blend. Our sweet red wine blend is a delicious combination of Zinfandel, Pinot Noir, Barbera, Grenache and Petite Sirah. This red blend wine is ripe and jammy with explosive flavors of raspberry, plum and cherry for the best soft and smooth finish. Enjoy this sweet red wine with grilled veggies and marinated steaks. Gather up the family and friends for a BBQ and a bottle of one of the sweetest wine blends we have. What do you enjoy Sweet Red Blend with best? Consider this a complimentSweet red wines are often sought after as either an introduction to wine or as a "transitionary wine" from white to red wines. Though red wines that are firmly planted in the sweet category are considerably harder to find than sweet white wines, they are available. In the wine world, sweet is the opposite of dry. The majority of the world's red wines are made in a dry style, meaning that they have lower levels of residual sugar (RS) and often a higher tannin content which adds considerably to the dry perception.

When it comes to sweet wines in general, it is easy to confuse sweet with "fruity." While a wine's sweetness is perceived by the taste buds on the tip of the tongue, a wine's fruitiness is largely an aromatic perception. taken king codes freeKeep in mind, you can physically only taste four sensations: sweet, sour, salty and bitter, yet you can smell thousands of scents, so a wine's fruitiness is the result of the combined efforts of taste and aroma. best wines to help you sleepTannins will also tame fruit  if a wine is overly tannic it will bind the fruit on the palate and mask aromas and perceptions of fruit.wine on tap systemWines can be loosely categorized as sweet, off-dry (semi-sweet) or dry. top wine companies in china

It is typically the amount of residual sugar in a wine that will determine a wine's level of sweetness. Remember, that the process of fermentation takes the naturally occurring sugars in the grape and converts them into alcohol through the use of yeast.best wine for 21 day fix With this in mind, a key wine label indicator that can often serve to give you clues to the residual sugar content is the alcohol level. wine in india costIn table wines, the lower the alcohol level, the higher the residual sugar content and the sweeter the wine (in most cases). That's one reason that you'll often see German Rieslings with alcohol levels in the range of the 8-12%, with considerably higher levels of residual sugar. The most famous sweet red wines fall into the distinctly dessert wine category, where the fortified wine was known and loved as Port will do its best to fill a sweet tooth's expectations.

Germany's Dornfelder grape is often made in a lighter-styled, slightly sweet version and while not overly exported, it can certainly be found in U.S. markets and is worth a try if you are searching for a sweeter-styled red wine. Italy's Lambrusco is a slightly sweet, slightly sparkling inexpensive red wine that was wooed wine lovers the world over for years. It is intended to be consumed young and is readily available in most markets. In Australia, sweet red wines are appropriately dubbed, "stickies" and have a range of grapes and producers that build into their success stories.Again, most sweet red wines will fall under the "dessert wine" designation. Below are some top notch red dessert wines that will rock your red wine world.Banfi's Rosa Regale - This bright red wine from Italy's well-loved Piedmont region has a devoted following. It is a red sparkling wine that is sweet and subtle with the lush flavors of ripe raspberry and juicy strawberry. Consider giving this wine a run with chocolate-based desserts, fresh fruit and pecan pie.

Souverain Dessert Syrah Alexander Valley - A unique, sweet red wine offering from Sonoma's Souverain winery, this dessert red will knock your socks off. With residual sugar in the 10% range and the dark berry flavors of blackberry and black cherry along with thick layers of spice, make this wine an extraordinary sweet red wine find!Rosenblum Cellars Late Harvest Zinfandel - Zinfandel tends to put more fruit forward as it is, but when combined with the concentrated sugars of the late harvest, this Rosenbloom wine throws some serious sweet to the palate. Expect some rich toffee character combined with dark cherry, raspberry and a touch of fig all under the veil of sweet spice. Inniskillin Winery Cabernet Franc - Inniskillin is Canada's premier ice wine producer. As such they have devoted themselves to making ice wine out of Cabernet Franc - to say that it showcases sweet red berry fruit, mainly strawberry and raspberry would be a severe understatement. It is a virtual explosion of concentrated fruit carried out with an elegance that is unsurpassed.

The next time you find yourself searching for a sweet red wine, remember a key label clue is the alcohol content. For sweet red wines, it's one of two extremes - a high alcohol content as found in the most famous sweet red wine, Port, or lower alcohol levels than a typical red table wine, generally in the 8-11% range indicating that the fermentation process was stopped before all of the grape's natural sugars were converted to alcohol.Lately, choosing red wine vinegar at the supermarket gives me the same nervous feeling as trying to pick the right wine for dinner guests. As with balsamic vinegars, the number of red wine vinegars in the condiment aisle has exploded in the past decade. I can choose between brand-name vinegars my mother has used for years and newer ones that boast impressive European pedigrees. Is French better than American? Does aged red wine vinegar provide more depth of flavor? Will a pan deglazed with vinegar that began life as a Zinfandel or Pinot Noir create a sauce that’s more piquant than one flavored with vinegar simply labeled “red”?

Considering that some vinegars cost less than 20 cents per ounce, are the ones that cost four or five times as much actually worth the money? We last tasted red wine vinegars in 2003. Given the proliferation of options since, we decided that it was time to take a fresh look. Food scientist Harold McGee aptly calls vinegar “the natural sequel to an alcoholic fermentation.” For centuries, humankind supplied the wine, and nature provided it with bacteria (Acetobacter aceti), which, with the help of oxygen, metabolizes wine’s ethyl alcohol and converts it into the acetic acid that gives vinegar its distinctive sharp scent and mouth-puckering flavor. Today, most commercial red wine vinegars are produced via two distinct methods. The first, the Orléans method, was developed in the 14th century. To start fermentation, oak barrels of wine are inoculated with a “mother of vinegar”—a cellulose glob loaded with acetic acid bacteria from an established vinegar. Periodically, vinegar is drawn off and fresh wine added, and the process continues until all the alcohol is converted into acetic acid.

Some argue that this method makes for a more flavorful wine vinegar because it gives the flavor compounds time to develop and mature. But it’s also expensive, since it takes months before the vinegar is ready for the market. In the second, more modern method, wine and bacteria are put in an acetator, a stainless-steel machine that rapidly circulates oxygen through red wine to feed the bacteria. This method converts alcohol into acetic acid in about a day, although some of these rapidly produced vinegars are then put in barrels for additional aging and, presumably, improved flavor. Domestic varieties of red wine vinegar are typically just 5 to 6 percent acetic acid, while imports are usually in the 7 percent range; the strength is determined by a dilution with water. But the unique flavor profile of a vinegar is influenced not only by acetic acid but also by naturally occurring flavor compounds from the base wine, as well as by new compounds created during the production process.

The question was, which of these factors would actually make a difference to our tasters? We asked 21 staff members to taste and rate 10 red wine vinegars, selected from a list of top-selling national supermarket brands. Most cooks don’t do shots of vinegar unless they’re masochists, but I was curious to learn if we’d get some early preferences right out of the bottle. I assumed that tasters would be partial to the vinegars that were sweet and less harsh, since they’d be tasting these potent substances straight. In fact, the favorite in this round fell right in the middle of the rankings for sweetness and harshness. Tasters, it seemed, liked full flavor and a little sharpness. While I wasn’t confident that we had a front-runner yet, the plain tasting did reveal that some of the vinegars had unpleasant off-flavors and aromas, the most common being the smell of nail polish remover, or acetone. This was not surprising, since any traces of alcohol left in vinegar will bond chemically with acetic acid to create ethyl acetate, a compound that has the same distinctive scent as the acetone found in nail polish remover.

“A little bit is OK,” said Mary Ellen Camire, a professor of food science and nutrition at the University of Maine, explaining that acetate can give vinegar a pleasing fruitiness. “But too much can indicate a production failure.” Next we tasted the vinegars as they would actually be used—in a simple vinaigrette served with butter lettuce and in pickled onions. Surprisingly, some of the harsher vinegars, which had made tasters choke in the plain tasting, were experienced as relatively sweet in the vinaigrette. How could this be? I recalled that the mayonnaise we had used to help emulsify the vinaigrette contained a small amount of sugar. Our science editor confirmed that the strong, highly acidic vinegars were acting synergistically with this sugar to heighten its sweet taste. Less acidic vinegars, on the other hand, were being pushed into the background, allowing the strong flavor compounds in the extra-virgin olive oil and the mustard to mask sweetness. This told me that a good vinegar needs some muscle in the form of acidity to tease out all the flavors from the bunch.

But in the end, these highly acidic vinegars lost the battle with our tasters. The most expensive of the supermarket brands ended up tied for last place with the other most acidic entry. The majority of tasters simply found them too harsh, especially when sampled plain or in pickled onions. However, since they scored well in our vinaigrette tasting, they might be worth buying if you like a strong, bracing vinegar to dress your salads. At the top of the heap, a French import knocked our former favorite down a couple of notches with its crisp red wine flavor balanced by stronger than average acidity and subtle sweetness. While this vinegar gets its start in an acetator and then is aged in wooden barrels for two months before bottling, we weren’t convinced that aging was the reason that our tasters gravitated toward this brand. Several of our lowest-ranking vinegars were also aged. There is one characteristic shared by all three top vinegars: They’re blends. One is made from a mix of red and white vinifera grapes, another adds an aged vinegar sourced from Spain to its domestically produced vinegar, and our former favorite is created from a combination of sweet Concord grapes and winy vinifera-type grapes.

(It’s worth noting that our favorite high-end vinegar adds Bing cherry juice to heighten the flavor of its base vinegar.) Multiple varieties of grapes create vinegar with a complex and pleasing taste—aging is not necessarily required. For everyday red wine vinegar, our winner is hard to beat. At 35 cents per ounce, it’s not the least expensive brand we tasted, but that’s a reasonable price for a vinegar that doesn’t compromise on flavor. We set up a challenge between our new favorite supermarket brand of red wine vinegar, Laurent du Clos (35 cents per ounce), and our longtime gourmet favorite, O Zinfandel ($1.18 per ounce). In blind tastings, we sampled them plain, in vinaigrette, and in pickled onions. Although O Zinfandel won, it wasn’t a landslide, with Laurent du Clos receiving high marks for its pleasing wine flavor and balanced acidity. At $7.99 for a 6.8-ounce bottle, O is nice to have on hand when you need a spoonful to dress a salad, but if you require more than that for a recipe, you’ll get excellent flavor—and save a few bucks—with our supermarket pick’s bigger bottle and smaller price tag.