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Abnormal alcohol level for a white wine I made a barrel of 2001 Pinot Grigio in much the same style as the one you tasted. It had a fair amount of copper color from skin contact, and the fruit was very ripe at ~25° Brix. It fermented out to about 15% alcohol, but it has enough fruit and oak that it doesn't seem particularly "hot". To reach 16% alcohol the Brix in your example wine must have been even higher than mine. Somewhere around 27° Brix would get it there. For it not to appear hot on the palate, the fruit must have either been remarkably ripe OR botrytised to some degree. The trick is not in getting the fruit to such a degree of ripeness that it can produce that much alcohol. Late harvest fruit can easily top 30° Brix, and I've heard numbers in excess of 40°. The difficult part is in getting the fermentation to go to completion at high Brix. The effective limit for a non-fortified fermentation is about 18% alcohol or so. Beyond that the yeast simply poop out and die, leaving whatever unfermented sugar there is as residual sugar in the resulting sweet wine. There are only a few yeast strains that are capable of reaching such high alcohol levels. Montrachet is one, and Prise de Mousse may be another. Even so, the conditions have to be favorable (temperature, nutrient, oxygen access) for the yeast to produce such high alcohol without "sticking" prematurely. Tom S
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