not sweet on Math!!

[vernsgal]

say I had 1g wine that stopped fermenting at SG .096 and an exact duplicate of the same wine stop at .992.
Now using my math of 1 cup sugar will bring SG up .018/g , if I want the sweetness to be ,say for easy math, 1.014 by adding more sugar to the wine that went to .992 wouldn't that make the taste sweeter even if the SG is the same?

 

[sour_grapes]

Of course, the answer is "It depends." It depends on what is different between the 0.996 and 0.992 wines. Is the difference between the two due to non-fermentable dissolved solids, or is it due to sugar?

In your example, however, you said (for sake of argument) that these wines were "exact duplicates." I will interpret this to mean that they started out with the same contents, but one just fermented farther than the other. In this case, I will posit that, upon sweetening them both to 1.014, they will taste the same. You will have to add more sugar to the 0.992 one, but the 0.996 one started off with more sugar. They would wind up with (close to) the same amount of sugar.

The only reason I had to throw a (close to) codicil in there was because the wines will have slightly different ABV, and so, upon bringing them up to the same SG, they will have slightly different amounts of sugar. But basically they should taste the same.

 

[vernsgal]

Thanks Paul.The wine I did is from a kit.I made a few tweaks and sweetened it for hubby.When the 2nd one fermented drier than the 1st and needed more sugar to get it to the same SG as the 1st..well I started questioning what I thought I knew .
(and I knew it would be answered with" it depends" )