Residual Sugar; grams/liter or %

Vino · 2004-05-18T04:33:29+00:00

Residual sugar (RS) in a wine is sometimes (not often enough, butthat's another issue for another day) shown on the label as mg/100ml(or grams per liter; the difference between the two differs only inthe placement of the decimal point) and other times as a percentage,presumably by weight. Either measure is reasonably straightforward. Myproblem is converting one into the other.A posting in an earlier thread indicated that the conversion factorwas 1.7, meaning, if I understood it correctly, that the RS of a winethat contained 1.7 grams per liter would be 1.0%. After thinking aboutthis for a while, it seems to me that the conversion factor woulddepend on the density (or specific gravity) of the particular wine. Bymy reasoning, the figure of 1.7 (or any other figure, for that matter)may be a useful approximation for wines in general, but can never bemore than an approximation for that purpose.Can anyone enlighten me on this?VinoTo reply, add "x" betweenletters and numbers ofe-mail address.

May 18, 2004 22 Replies

Rate this thread:

Mark Lipton 22 years ago

Yup. In the case of sucrose, the answer is that the volume increase is slightly *less* than the sum of the volumes; some salts, on the other hand, will actually increase the volume of the solution as they dissolve. It all depends on how the solute interacts with the solvent -- and even then it's not anything that's easy to predict.

HTH Mark Lipton

Vote

Mike Tommasi 22 years ago

slightly *less* than the

volume of the

solvent -- and

As JFK used to say, "if you're not part of the solvent, you're not part of the solution". I think.

Mike

Mike Tommasi, Six Fours, France email link

formatting link

Vote

Mark Lipton 22 years ago

:-)

Mark Lipton

Vote

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required