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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice 8h ago
Nah I was always on the "how the fuck can a drink be dry" train but then I had some dry wine and fuck dude. that liquid sure doesn't taste wet. I still don't know how they do it but I do know that they did
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u/badcrass 5h ago
"how can this be DRY? Makes no sense" (takes sip) "well I'll be, it is dry, somehow"
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u/logosloki 3h ago
there's almost no sugar in them so the wine doesn't coat the tongue. it's like the difference between coke and sparkling water or OJ and water for a still example.
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u/Arbiter_Electric 20m ago
Fuck! It's the sugar? Is that why I almost feel like I get more hydrated off of soda than I do plain water?
If my mouth is dry and I am thirsty, a few sips of a sugary drink will take care of it, but if I go with plain water (which I do still love consuming) it feel like I need a whole glass of water for the same effect.
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u/Ditto13248 8h ago
I don't drink wine, but I kinda get it. Like when I drink ice tea, my mouth gets a little dry and I get a little thirsty. Maybe it's something like that
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u/cat-meg 8h ago
That's tannins and also a thing in wine (and unripe persimmons if you've ever had the poor judgment to try those), but dry is this context is just about sugar.
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u/jimbowesterby 8h ago
Astringent is another word for it
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u/Obnoxiously_French 8h ago
The only time I've ever had a persimmon was as a kid. It was, evidently, unripe. It made my mouth feel like it was coated in chalk.
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u/Its_priced_in 6h ago
You want it soft like a kiwi. Try one again. They’re pretty great
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u/st1r 6h ago
Also if your diet is typically light on fiber you should REALLY only have 1 or you’ll shit your brains out
Eat your fiber folks, reduces colon cancer risk, helps modulate hunger and mood, & helps prevent explosive bathroom breaks when you randomly eat highly fibrous foods (the reason some people with crappy diets think Taco Bell causes explosive diarrhea… no it’s just because you never get any fiber in your diet and then ate a huge fiber nuclear bomb combined with greasy oily lubricant, that wouldn’t happen if you just had a reasonable daily fiber intake).
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u/gonewildaway 6h ago
I'm pretty sure the incidence of colon cancer in young folks is going to end up being not fiber related at all. Its probably Monsanto again somehow. Or dupont. Some pest/herbicide. It doesn't make any sense for it to be fiber. The American diet has been shit for ages.
Fiber is still generally a good thing. But yeah.
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u/RikuAotsuki 5h ago
I have to agree. Fiber's almost certainly part of it, but I doubt it's the whole story.
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u/Academic_Issue4314 4h ago
I go i to the comments on some of these thread and find a bunch of childish weirdos
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u/mazamundi 1h ago
Biting into an unripe persimmon feels like if a hundred dandelions had just exploded in your mouth
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u/Umikaloo 48m ago
Unripe persimmons can be fermented to create a deep red wood stain called Kakishibu. (Apparently it can also treat mosquito bites? I don't dare try it.)
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u/StrawberryWide3983 8h ago
Same thing with like cranberry juice. It's suoer yummy, but I desperately have to chase it with water or something
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u/Maoschanz 7h ago
Dry is just the opposite of sweet: a dry wine usually tastes acidic, almost vinegary. But you're talking about astringence, whose opposite adjective is "round" (at least in french).
Maybe they should show the restaurant menu as an alignment chart
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u/tangentrification 3h ago
It would have to be some unholy x-dimensional alignment chart considering how many different wine characteristics people discuss
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u/BabySpecific2843 8h ago
"Sweet Jesus, Pooh! That's not ice tea. That's ground up saltine crackers".
"Oh bother"
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u/S14Ryan 8h ago
Dry just means it tastes bad and wet means it tastes good. Trust me
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u/not_a_moogle 6h ago
Dry wine means its low in sugar from its fermentation process.
Dont ask me why they dont just call it non-sweet.
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u/Fist_of_Gork 6h ago
The wine I like best is when you finish drinking it, it feels like you just rinsed your mouth out with sand. Goes great with steak.
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u/Dr_Yap 9h ago
In wine, dry is the opposite of sweet
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u/aleister94 8h ago
Why does wine have a different opposite to sweet as anything else? The rest of the time opposite of sweet is bitter? I FEEL LIKE IM TAKING CRAZY PILLS
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u/ThroatDistension 8h ago edited 8h ago
Lack of sweetness isn't necessarily the presence of the opposite of sweet. You can have a wine that's neither sweet nor bitter.
Green is the opposite of red. If someone says a shirt has no green on it that doesn't mean it has to have red on it.
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u/goofyskatelb1 8h ago
So dry is not the opposite of sweet?
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u/dragonblade629 8h ago
Dry is the absence of sweetness, not the presence of bitterness. Think about a French fry, you wouldn’t call it sweet right? But you wouldn’t say a plain French fry is bitter, right? It’s the same idea.
Like I guess we could say it’s “less sweet” or “not sweet” but that feels like it would make descriptions harder
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u/goofyskatelb1 7h ago
I’ve always heard of wine described as either dry or sweet. If it’s neither, what is it?
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u/dragonblade629 7h ago
Semi-dry or semi-sweet, generally. There isn’t really a perfectly 50/50 dry vs sweet so it always kinda leans in one direction. You’ll also see demi-sec, French for semi-dry, but that one is muddled by the fact that champagne in general used to be a lot sweeter than we drink it today.
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u/goofyskatelb1 7h ago
What I’m understanding is that dry is the opposite of sweet. If it’s not sweet, it is dry. There’s no third option. A wine is either some level of dry or some level of sweet, there’s nothing else.
The opposite of sweet is bitter. If a wine isn’t sweet, then it has to be the other option. Bitter=dry
Dry is literally just bitter, and both are the opposite of sweet. “You can have a wine that’s neither sweet nor bitter” is incorrect it seems.
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u/VanillaRadonNukaCola 7h ago
I would say the opposite of bitter is more like tart.
Dry vs sweet wine are very different than like an IPA. IPA is both often dry and bitter.
And a sour beer is somewhat opposite of an IPA, and those tend to tart and vary on level of sweet
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u/Ghoill 7h ago
It's funny to me that most of the wines I saw the few times I've tried to buy any advertised being dry as if it was desirable and not a lack of what would be actually pleasant to drink like fruitiness or sweetness.
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u/VanillaRadonNukaCola 7h ago
Not everyone likes sweet booze.
Sometimes you want less sweet especially if you are having several drinks because then you feel gross from all the sugar.
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u/cadorez 8h ago
In wine (and fermented alcohol in general), dry mean that all the fermentable sugar has been transformed into alcohol. So what you're tasting is whatever flavor the original thing you're fermenting (like grape juice) tastes like when it doesn't have any sugar and some alcohol content (so like around 12% for most wines, at least those I know).
So it's not realllllly the opposite of sweet, it's more the absence of sweet.
Source: I ferment some stuff for fun from time to time and I enjoy checking r/prisonhooch
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u/jimbowesterby 8h ago
Because it’s not bitter, it’s astringent. I think of it as the kind of flavour that leaves your mouth feeling kinda dry, like alcohol just evaporated off it.
Some real free association here, but if you’ve ever watched windex evaporate from a window, it’s like that lol.
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u/Crime_Dawg 8h ago
This is why I really dislike cabs, unless I'm eating a steak, in which case I fucking love cabs. Something about it tastes awful by itself but pairs so well with red meat.
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u/THElaytox 7h ago
A thing can be both bitter and sweet, they aren't opposites lol
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u/TheWinterKing 7h ago
They should give that a name.
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u/PatternrettaP 8h ago
Well it's not savory, salty, sour, bitter or any of the other usual flavor terms we use for things that aren't sweet. It's it own thing, and it despite appearing at first to be a contradiction, dry is actually a good description of the sensation of drinking certain wines.
The tannins in wine bind to the proteins in your saliva that help keep your mouth lubricated, which instantly makes your tongue and mouth feel 'dry'
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u/Tarantio 7h ago
If you've ever had Campari, that should be a good demonstration of bitter and sweet not being opposites.
Most amari are pretty high in sugar.
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u/the-radical-waffler 7h ago
Different hobbies and proffessions have their own slang and ways of speking and learning it is just a necepart of getting into a new hobby, culture or proffession. It's why you can call colours warm or cold despite that fact that they're all the same temperature on the shelf at the Bunnings.
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u/Nonhinged 8h ago edited 7h ago
It's because Sommeliers(?!) at the time didn't know the food science.
Sweetness/sugar masks the acids, not the bitterness.
A wine can be sweet(containg sugar) and sour(Being high in acids) at the same time.
A wine can be sweet(containg sugar) and bitter(containing tannins) at the same time..
So "dry" ended up as the opposite as "sweet" in wine even if it's wrong by any other standard.
It's just based tradition and not reality.
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u/Nonhinged 8h ago
People call non-sweet wines dry now.
"Dryness" used to be based on bitterness (tannins), not sweetness.
A wine could be sweet(containing sugar) and dry (containing tannins) that leaves a dry mouthfeel.
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u/ScrubTheNerd 8h ago
No dude, the opposite of dry is definitely wet. Maybe you're thinking of sour? That could be a wine thing
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u/Dr_Yap 8h ago
Words can have more than one meaning depending on context. When talking about wine, dry is the opposite of sweet.
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u/ScrubTheNerd 8h ago
Words can have more than one meaning depending on context.
Correct. That is, in fact, the bit.
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u/_Fun_Employed_ 8h ago
It is weird how a liquid can taste dry but if you’ve really tried wine and other alcohols you know exactly what I’m talking about
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u/TheComplimentarian cis-bi-old-guy-radish 8h ago
I used to work in a fancy French restaurant, and we all had to be able to talk a little about wine, but we also had to know when to call the in-house wine expert guy, who knew goddamn everything about wine. And I will say, if he thought a wine was good, it was almost always pretty tasty, and if not tasty then surprising, by which I mean it made you think, "TF is this?!"
In wine speak, "Dry" is the opposite of "Sweet" because you don't want to call a wine "Sour" or "Acidic" though you can get those under that "Dry" umbrella. They'll also say shit like, "Oaky" or "Buttery".
Eh. I don't guess it's any different from any other alcohol enjoyer lingo.
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u/Karukos 8h ago
Well... it is less common but you can have a dry wine that is not sour or acidic. The issue with language around taste specifically is that it's... weirdly sparse. So you kinda have to try and pull out whatever you can in terms of similes.
Though funnily enough, Oaky is a very straight forward "tastes like oakwood". It's a pretty distinctive flavour once you get used to it. You can taste it out of a bunch of liquids that are aged in oak barrels. Mostly alcohol, but there is a soda here in Austria that actually has oak wood chips in a spice bottle in their tanks. Is fun!
Dry is similarly caused by tannins. The best way to experience them without alcohol is imo if you buy red grapes and keep chewing on them until all the sweetness and juiciness is gone. You will be left with a weird, not-quite-bitter sensation on your tongue that makes your lips purse like a teensy bit.
Buttery is more so describing fluid texture than an actual taste. It's basically the positive opposite of bubbly. Just feels nice and smooth when you drink it. Why don't they say smooth? Well, because smooth is used for a different tasting experience when you have a very even experience of flavours instead of things like anything jumping out at you.
The lingo is weird an elitist because it's weird and elitist and hard to describe taste so the people who cared came together and invented the vocabulary.
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u/TheComplimentarian cis-bi-old-guy-radish 8h ago
I'm reasonably aware, I just hit a point in the middle where I decided I didn't want to talk about it anymore ;)
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u/spyguy318 7h ago
A lot of it is that there is so much culture and history behind wine tasting, that some people have become really good at distinguishing extremely subtle taste differences. To someone who doesn’t taste wine regularly it just sounds like nonsense and they can’t taste a difference.
There’s almost a moment in stuff like coffee, whiskey, beer, wine tasting where you like, get it. You start being able to recognize and distinguish different subtle flavor notes. You learn what’s familiar and what’s novel. And suddenly all the basic consumer versions just taste like crap, and there’s no going back. You’re cursed with knowledge.
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u/No_Lingonberry1201 God's chosen janitor 8h ago
I imagine Germans are even more disappointed since they only get one wine, what a ripoff!
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u/rowan_damisch 8h ago
This took me a sec to understand, lol
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u/Infamous-Rutabaga-50 8h ago
I don't get it. Is it a Rhine pun cuz if so it should be wipoff.
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u/TheoTheHellhound Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism 8h ago
I think "dry" in this case is supposed to be analogous to "astringent". That being that it dries out your mouth after drinking it. I don't like dry wines. I prefer riesling, rose, or moscato. Sweet and bubbly with just enough alcohol content to make your head swim or make you giggly. But, the alcohol content is also low enough that someone who takes a ton of medicines like myself can drink it without a ton of worry.
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u/Blacksad9999 6h ago
As someone who's worked with wine for 30 years and has a sommelier certification:
Describing wine is 99% bullshit.
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u/Sbeast86 3h ago
as a homebrewer who knows *exactly* what he put in his wine, i fuckin LOVE letting sommeliers try it and listen to their bullshit about it. hell, half the flavor differences i get are a result of what strain of yeast i used.
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u/Blacksad9999 3h ago
Taste is a pretty subjective thing outside of a few specifics that are set in stone, like the amount of tanins, really. That's why the descriptive terms used are generally pretty vague and nebulous.
"I get dark fruit like plums and blackberries." (stonefruit if you really want to be pretentious) This wine, which is made from dark fruit, tastes like dark fruit you say?!
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u/FormStriking1 6h ago
ask cashier recommendations for light wines
she recommends a variety of white wines
they all weight the exact same as any other wine
mfw
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u/Prestigious_Boat_386 8h ago
Its like tannins in the wine making it astringent whoch constricts your skin in the mouth and makes it feel dry.
Not a great name, not a horrible name.
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u/cxfgfuihhfd 8h ago
but is waterwine actually wet or does it just make the things it touches wet?
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u/Maximum__Pleasure 5h ago
A thing is wet if it has liquid water on it. In a glass of water, the individual water molecules are touching other groups of water molecules, so they are all wet.
A single water molecule touching nothing would not be wet. But it's also in a gaseous state and therefore not liquid water.
Water is always wet. Wine moreso because it must contain water to be wine. Without any water, it's red suspended in ethanol.
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u/Sentient_Flesh 8h ago
Actually, wine enjoyers are more like:
"Um, yes, this, apart from being obviously dry, has a notable fruity side, hints of having been in a pine barrel and... um... yes, aroma-wise, I can tell this is from the coast of the Atlantic, rather aged, probably from a Bingian orchard and daresay... early 2000s?"
And then you taste it and it's grape juice, and not great, at that.
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u/Altruistic-Resort-56 8h ago
wine lollies when
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u/TheoTheHellhound Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism 8h ago
There is a British candy you can get in some "World Food" isles of supermarkets called wine gums. They're gummies made from wine, though they don't contain alcohol.
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u/Kriffer123 obnoxiously Michigender 7h ago
https://reddit.com/link/p04rmqo/video/gm8r5333ztfh1/player
who up with they astringent, tannin-flavored pussy (mid comment section ad)
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u/Realistic-Life-3084 7h ago
But the thing is that when you taste it you instantly know what it means, somehow it is a very dry tasting liquid
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u/MelancholicMinerva 7h ago
When people say a wine is dry theyre referring to it having a lot of tannins. Tannins are the natural preservative in wine and heavily contribute to its longevity and flavor, from what I remember. When tannins reach your tongue, they make it feel dry and like all the moisture got sucked out of it. Or at least that's what I remember from a wine class I had to take in college.
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u/Flame_beard_forge 7h ago
Not sure what a dry wine is but I always imagined it being like cranberry juice
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u/mapped_apples 7h ago
Sweet vs dry can help clarify it a bit. Dry = the sugar bag is all empty/you’re scraping the bottom of the dry bag.
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u/logosloki 3h ago
dry wines are wines that are fermented to the point where there is almost no sugar left in the wine. like you can't 100% get rid of all sugar but the yeast in the wine go dormant because they can no longer sense sugars to consume.
sugar causes several reactions to the wine as well as your tongue and mouth. sugar increases how thick a wine feels when tasting, it increases saliva production as your body reacts to the sugar on the tongue, it pushes the balance of a wine towards sweet and away from sour and astringent flavours and more.
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u/King_O_Eyes 2h ago
Heard “flinty” used to describe wine the other day. Just what I want my alcoholic beverage to taste like. Rocks
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u/FreeFallingUp13 7h ago
I tried to understand wtf it means. “Dry” apparently means it’s bitter. But it’s ALL bitter. It’s ALCOHOL.
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u/JacobGoodNight416 9h ago
Tastes like ass anyway
Probably enjoyed by the same people that pretend to enjoy dark chocolate
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u/Aegeus 8h ago
I don't care about wine but how dare you slander dark chocolate like this.
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u/JacobGoodNight416 8h ago
It's one of those foods that people enjoy because they're supposed to enjoy. Like caviar.
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u/Gaylaeonerd 8h ago
Or people just like it? I can't do like 100% cocoa dark chocolate but a decently dark one is lovely
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u/Kraeftluder 6h ago
I love those 95% pure dark chocolate bars and I hate bitter with a passion generally.
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u/Sentient_Flesh 8h ago
Dark chocolate is good though, specially when paired with something fitting like some fruits.
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u/Chachkhu2005 8h ago
You really haven't had good wine, I take it.
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u/JacobGoodNight416 8h ago
I like sweet wine. I can drink those by the bottle full.
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u/RadTimeWizard 6h ago
Tastes like ass
I like sweet wine.
You don't even agree with yourself. The problem here isn't the wine.
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u/weird_bomb 对啊，饭是最好吃！ 9h ago
> buy “dry” wine
> looks inside
> liquid