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Vin doux naturel

FortifiedPartly set by law

The same stopped fermentation as port, applied to aromatic white grapes. Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise is the archetype: grape aroma preserved intact under alcohol.

The numbers

Each bar drawn against all 30 styles

Alcohol

15-18%

15% - 18%

Titratable acidity

4.5-6.5 g/L

4.5 - 6.5

pH

3.2-3.6

3.2 - 3.6

Residual sugar

90-140 g/L

90 - 140

Serve at

8-12 C

Worth opening after

1 years

and it keeps improving to roughly 10 years

Sulphite at pH 3.40

32 mg/L

free SO2, for 0.8 mg/L molecular

What goes wrong

Losing the aroma before you fortify. The terpenes that make it worth doing are gone if the ferment ran warm.

Usually made from

At least one of these figures is set by an appellation or labelling rule somewhere. The rest are typical published analyses of commercial examples.