For straw wine, the grapes dry not on the vine but after harvest.
Beautiful, healthy bunches are dried on straw or racks for weeks or months. The berries shrivel, the sugar becomes concentrated, and the wine ends up with honey, nut and dried-fruit flavours.
The French vin de paille and the Italian passito wines.
The shared secret of sweet wines is that the sugar content of the grape berry becomes concentrated before or after harvest. This can happen through noble rot, shrivelling, freezing or drying.
Late-harvest wine is made from shrivelled or noble-rotted grapes, ice wine from frozen grapes. The former can range from off-dry to sweet; ice wine is pure, acidic and concentrated.
Tokaji aszú is made from noble-rotted grapes; its main varieties are Furmint, Hárslevelű and Sárga Muskotály. Today every aszú must contain at least 120 g/l of residual sugar.
