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Dry comedians are funny. But dry congressmen, like dry wine, aren’t sweet.
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On this day in 1947, the U.S. Congress proceedings are televised for the first time.
I couldn’t find much data on how many people actually tuned in. But considering there were only 14,000 TV sets operating in the United States at that time, I can’t imagine there were too many folks watching our fearless leaders live and in action back then.
My guess is that those that did watch were treated to the same excitement, splendor, and pageantry that we currently enjoy on CSPAN and CSPAN2, but on tiny, fuzzy, black and white screens.
And it is the character of the debates and the impassioned speeches that we all enjoy on the Congressional floor that inspires me to present to you today’s Wine Word of the Day: Dry
Seriously, how many of you watch CSPAN? The televised coverage of Congress seems to serve only two purposes: fodder for political entertainers like Jon Stewart and Rush Limbaugh, or to cure insomnia.
But I’m here to educate you about wine, and not to remind you of why you drink wine to deal with bad politics.
So, back to the tasting term, “dry.”
Besides referring to the mind-numbing boredom caused by a long-winded senator, dry also indicates the level of sweetness of a wine. There are sweet wines and there are dry wines. Dry wines have no sugar in them.
This brings us to the concept of “residual sugar.” Grapes, when harvested for wine, are very sweet. They are usually picked when they contain around 24 to 26% sugar by volume. The winemaker then decides how much sugar to ferment into alcohol and how much to leave in the wine. And any sugar left in the wine is referred to as “residual sugar.”
Most people can’t detect sweetness on their tongue when there is less than half a percent of residual sugar in the wine. Thus, it is a dry wine. If there is, say, half a percent to 2% sugar left in the wine it may be called “off-dry.” Going further, if there is even more sugar in the wine, like 2% to 4% or so, it may be deemed as semi-sweet. But once the sugar level increases dramatically above that, then you have a dessert wine.
Please don’t confuse a dry wine with “astringency.” Many young red wines are astringent, meaning they dry out your mouth. You know how it goes, your mouth puckers up and you lips stick to your teeth. Yes, your mouth feels dry, but that’s not what is meant by a “dry” wine. But since most red wines have a residual sugar level under half a percent, they are also dry in terms of wine speak.
Just remember, a dry wine is simply a wine that is not sweet. Sure, grapes start out sweet, just like a congressman on the campaign trail, but are often fermented completely dry just like same congressman’s dull, promise-breaking speech in front of the CSPAN cameras.
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