What Is Wine Sugar Content?
Wine sugar content is the residual sugar left in a bottle after fermentation, measured in grams per litre (g/L). Yeast turns grape sugar into alcohol; whatever survives the ferment stays behind as sweetness you can taste. A bone dry red can carry less than 1 g/L, while a dessert icewine in our database reaches 463 g/L — a several-hundred-fold difference that the words "dry" or "sweet" on a label never quantify. That gap is exactly why this site exists: we publish the actual wine sugar content of 12,635 wines, beers, sakes and spirits, pulled from public LCBO product listings instead of guesswork.
The Wine Sweetness Chart: Five Tiers, Real Numbers
Every product here is graded on a wine sweetness chart with five tiers, defined purely by measured g/L — never by marketing copy:
| Tier | Sugar content | Products right now |
|---|---|---|
| Bone Dry | < 1 g/L | 2,469 |
| Dry | 1–10 g/L | 8,114 |
| Off-Dry | 10–35 g/L | 1,270 |
| Semi-Sweet | 35–120 g/L | 537 |
| Sweet | > 120 g/L | 245 |
Use the sugar slider above to move along this wine sweetness chart yourself, or start from a curated view like the red wine sweetness chart, which ranks every red by exact grams of sugar.
How Much Sugar Is in a Typical Bottle?
Real answers from real data. The median wine sugar content of a red wine in our database is 3 g/L; the median white wine sits at 3 g/L. In a standard 750 mL bottle, a 4 g/L wine holds just 3 grams of sugar in total — less than one sugar cube. At the other end, sweet wine styles such as Moscato, Sauternes and Canadian icewine climb past 100 g/L, and the sweetest bottle we track carries 463 g/L. Wine sugar content also varies by style in ways labels rarely admit: "semi-sweet" on one label can mean triple the sugar of another producer's "semi-sweet". Numbers settle the argument.
Finding Low Sugar Wine
If you are managing diabetes, eating keto, or simply prefer a drier pour, low sugar wine is easy to find here. Drag the sugar slider to 0–2 g/L and you get 5,552 products with almost no residual sugar — brut sparkling, most Cabernet Sauvignon, dry Riesling and nearly every gin and whisky. Because our low sugar wine picks rest on lab-grade wine sugar content figures rather than "feels dry", you can trust the shortlist bottle after bottle. Sort any category by Sugar (Low to High) and the driest options surface instantly.
For Sweet Wine Lovers
Sweetness is a feature, not a flaw — and sweet wine deserves the same precision. Whether you want an off-dry Riesling at 18 g/L or a full dessert sweet wine above 120 g/L, sorting by Sugar (High to Low) turns the whole database into a sweet wine leaderboard. Icewine, Moscato, Port and late-harvest bottles all show their true wine sugar content, so the level of sweetness you pour is the level you expected.
Does Higher Alcohol Mean Less Sugar?
Usually, yes — alcohol is what fermentation makes from sugar, so a bone dry 14.5% Cabernet has simply finished the job. But fortified styles break the rule: Port stops fermentation early with added spirit, keeping both high alcohol and high sweetness. Carbs are a separate question too — a "zero sugar" seltzer can still carry calories from alcohol itself. When the label leaves you guessing, the g/L column here gives you the answer in one glance.
Guides From the Blog
Prefer the story behind the numbers? We break the database down one grape at a time — every figure in these guides is computed from the same lab-reported data you can sort above:
- Merlot wine sugar content — how dry the classic soft red really is, and its off-dry exceptions.
- Chardonnay wine sugar content — why "buttery" isn't sugar, from Chablis to Yellow Tail.
- Rosé wine sugar content — bone-dry Provence vs. genuinely sweet pink Moscato.
Where the Numbers Come From
Every figure on this site comes from public LCBO product listings, where sugar values are lab-reported by producers and regulators — we never estimate and never let software invent a number. The database refreshes regularly, and each product page links back to its original listing so you can verify the wine sugar content yourself. This site is independent and not affiliated with the LCBO.