splenda for sugar in wine

This has been discussed quite a bit over the last few years and I believe if you search google for old posts on this topic, you will find a lot.

In a nutshell, most of the artificial sweeteners have one problem or another when used in wine. From my understanding as a chemist, I believe sucralose should be the one that would be the most stable. You might want to check if the commercial product, Splenda, has other ingredients in it that might cause a problem, but I think pure sucralose should be fine.

One of these days, I'll get around to writing up an article about artificial sweeteners in wine discussing their chemical stability.

Jack Keller was doing some experiments with splenda a couple years ago. I wonder if he has more insight on the long term stability now?

By the way, I presume you were asking about using it as a non-fermentable sweetener? Sucralose is not sugar, but a molecule that looks very much like a sugar. I don't think the yeast can ferment it.

Splenda works well for sweetening wine, assuming that you don't have anything that can consume the maltodextrin that the sucralose is packaged with. It isn't fermentable by yeast or bacteria as far as I know, and certainly not those microbes that are encountered in normal wine fermentations. Warren Place

That would be a real service to mankind, Greg. I hope you'll publish it here, and in the AWS magazine too, if possible.

I use "Equal" when I want to sweeten wine, and have had no problems, but I know some others have said it won't "keep."

I add it only when serving the wine, or giving it to a friend who likes sweet wine, so I've had no experience with its keeping qualities.

vince norris

Equal will be fine if added at the time of consumption. In the acidic environment of wine I would not expect it to survive for more than a few months.

One thing that you can do is to add Welche's _white_ grape juice concentrate when or after you stabilize the wine. It's flavor is pretty neutral so you don't have to worry about changing the wine too much. Not only will it sweeten the wine but it'll help to add some "body."

Jim L.

This is an excellent way to add sweetness to a wine. But that is adding sugar -- for those who are trying to avoid sugar (diabetics, etc) this is not a good option.

That's an interesting idea. But isn't the flavor quite foxy?

Does the juice diminish the wine's clarity?

vince norris