The Highest Alcohol Content Wines: Who Is Making Them and How?
Why would anyone focus on making the highest alcohol content wines? If you’ve spent at least a moderate amount of time reading up about vines and wines, you must be aware that not many professionals, if any, think highly of high alcohol wines. This rings especially true when it comes to critics, less so when you’re talking to people who are just enthusiastic about wines.
That said, for the past twenty years or so, we have seen a steady increase in the booziness of wine, the typical alcohol content in wine from New World producers has increased from 12% to northward of 15%. Some winemakers have even pushed their wine's alcohol content into the neighborhood of 20%. To compare, your garden-variety beer has about 4%, while vodka is a whopping 40%.
A Few Quick High Alcohol Wine Buying Suggestions
If you are looking for a wine in the 20% range, consider a port wine. You can find a great port by clicking here.
For a red wine that tops out near or over 15% abv, Zinfandel from a warm growing region is a great place to start. You can find a very nice bottle by clicking here.
You can also look for anything aged in bourbon barrels. This Cab aged in bourbon barrels has an abv of 16%!
How High Alcohol Content Wine Is Made
Before we go any further with the discussion, here’s a bit more background for the novices reading this – as grapes grow on their vines, they collect more and more sugar. Grapes that grow in cooler climates will have less sugar and tend to make for more acidic and lower alcohol wines, while those grown in warmer climates will make more fruit-forward, full-bodied wines. Also, the longer grapes stay on the vines, the more sugar they contain. This translates into wines with robust fruity flavor. It also means higher alcohol content in the wine.
There is a catch though. The yeast that is used to ferment the grape juice is a living organism. Even if you grow and crush the sweetest grapes, the yeast can only live so long. Most natural yeast will be killed by an alcohol content of around 13 - 15%. This means they can't keep converting sugars into alcohol. To get the highest alcohol content wines, the winemaker needs to work outside of natural fermentation.
Methods For Upping The Alcohol In Wine
Painting with a broad brush, there are two ways to make strong wine – either by fortifying it or making it (sort of) naturally. The very highest alcohol content wines rely on the first method.
Fortifying
The first process involves adding some sort of distilled spirit into the wine at some point during the fermentation, for the simple reason of preserving it. In the US, vintners use only spirits made from grapes, typically brandy. The key thing to remember here is that the later in the process you add it, the drier the wine will be, and vice versa. You can kill the yeast early by adding higher alcohol spirits. This will leave you with a sweeter final product because there is still sugar in the grape juice.
Natural Method
The natural process is pretty much what it reads on the tin, although it involves some extra steps if winemakers want to make a high alcohol wine that actually has flavor – this is what professionals in the industry call “taming” the wine, or balancing it, rather.
As we said above, yeast has been bred (no pun intended) to survive up to 13% ABV content (Alcohol By Volume). If the percentage goes northward, the yeast dies and no more sugar gets turned into alcohol. In recent times, we’ve been able to create yeast that can survive about 20%, though these are lucky strikes – in reality, any vintner that can get 16% out of the process should consider herself lucky.
Getting back to “taming” the wine – this is just striking the balance between booziness and flavor. Winemakers usually boost the flavor by using more grapes and/or whatever other fruit is used. For example, instead of using 2 to 3 pounds of grape per bottle, they’ll use 3 to 5, though there is really little else they can do (or are willing to disclose). Although we know there are some chemistry sets put to use in many wineries.
Where’s the Rub?
So, what’s the reason for this falling out of f(l)avor among the critics, you might ask? The issue is that making a wine that’s so high in alcohol, without sacrificing the richness and subtlety in flavor (i. e. taming it), is not an easy task. To paint a picture: poorly-made high alcohol wines can and will have pretty much the same effect a jalapeño pepper would – they’ll numb down your taste buds and kill off the more subtle notes in the vino.
Another problem with high alcohol content wines is precisely that – wines with too much of it are difficult to savor, especially if we’re talking long sessions where intoxication is a major issue. It’s no secret that the longer you taste wine, the better your opinion of it tends to be. Not to mention the fact wine enhances creativity, so you’ll have little trouble finding the words to praise it. All jokes aside, this is a major issue for professional tasters, which is why they carry a spittoon.
On a similar note, wines with over 15% ABV will have a negative impact on your palate. In other words, if you’re trying to taste a mix of vintages, whether it be high and low or just a selection of high ones, you won’t be able to get the most of it. Moreover, finding food pairings for these wines is a pain in the neck because of the numbing effect of the alcohol.
What’s great about High Alcohol Wines?
Despite the ill-favored opinion critics have about wines with high alcohol content, it’s exactly the alcohol that attracts us and has done so for about 8,000 years (trust us, we’ve crunched the numbers). So, how to plan a tasting session for wines as boozy as these?
First off, forget about food pairings and mixing vintages. What you want to do is focus on a single bottle and savor it over a prolonged period of time. Be sure to take comprehensive tasting notes as you taste it. You may notice that your opinion becomes gradually more favorable as it evolves, but that’s to be expected. Obviously, you’ll take the most objective notes in the beginning, while your palate is still fresh and your judgment unclouded by the wine’s punch.
How to Find Good Wine with High Alcohol Content
First off, you’ll need to take the style of the wine into account and check if the ABV is high for that particular variety. For example, if you are on the hunt for a Pinot Noir with high alcohol content, you should keep in mind that the average ABV is about 12%, so anything over that number should raise some flags. What you want here is to keep a weather eye on soft and sweet notes, seeing how this is the biggest problem with high-ABV Pinot Noir. A hint of acidity or earthy aroma would be a good indication, as this serves to offset the sweetness.
The Cheapest Wine With The Highest Alcohol Content
While you won't find any award-winning wines in this category, you can still find some pretty drinkable options like this Old Vine Zinfandel from Bogle that you can buy here.
Cheaper wines usually come from bulk grapes of mixed origin. If we look at California for example, the winemaker will buy grapes from all over the central valley and maybe some high production areas along the coast and mix them together. You will see California listed on the front of the label.
The good news for anyone looking for cheaper wine with high alcohol content is that most of the cheaper grapes come from warmer growing areas. That means more sugar. More sugar usually means a very strong wine.
Using The Highest Alcohol Wines As A Mixer
Most wine lovers don't think of using wine as a mixer. You may see exceptions made for sparkling wines (champagne, cave, etc). The French 75 comes to mind! But you rarely see cocktail recipes featuring either red or white wine. There is a good reason for this. Most wine is produced with the hopes that people will enjoy the subtle flavors of the wine. This is the craft of winemaking.
The highest alcohol wines don't pretend to aspire to the same level of nuance. This is wine as an alcohol delivery medium. That puts in the category with spirits and you see plenty of cocktails made of spirits.
The folks at Kalyra winery in Santa Barbara aren't shy about pushing this angle. They released two high alcohol wines that grab your attention. You can tell from the bottle these strong wines are different. They clock in with an abv just south of 24%. That is a very high ABV wine. They want to encourage more wine mixologists.
Suggestions
Most high alcohol wines are actually fortified. These include the Portuguese Port (red) and Madeira (white), Spanish Sherry (white), and Muscat (white). All of them have an ABV well above 14.5%.
On the other hand, recent years have seen vintners in California taking up the trend of naturally making boozy wines, typically around 15%. Examples include Petite Sirah and California Zinfandel, both red. Another good example is Amarone (also red), exclusive to Italy.
Now for a few more high alcohol wine suggestions. Kalyra Winery makes a very strong wine at 23.9%. This rosé wine mixer is aptly named 239. Another good bet is Santa Ynez Zinfandel from Bridlewood Estate Winery, with 15% ABV. If you’d like something older, you can go for their 14.5% Reserve Syrah.
Speaking of reserves, the 14.5% Syrah from Kendall-Jackson and 14.5% Sunstone Syrah are a couple of popular choices. Whether you agree or not is up to your palate.
