Beet sugar versus cane sugar...

[Mark DaSilva]

Does anyone know if some ports use beet sugar as opposed to cane sugar? And which ones?

Got to admit...scratching my head on this one...

[Nikolaj Winther]

What do you mean by "use sugar"?

The ports are made sweet by adding alcohol, thus stopping fermentation keeping residual sugar in the wine. In that manner of speaking, it's glucose (friut sugar) that's the sweetener in port.

[Frederick Blais]

Port producers will never admit it, but some do add to the liquid illegal stuffs according to the IVDP. Aware or not, they may tolerate it. It is a tabou and not much want to talk about it or point anyone that is doing it.

I'm not sure about beet sugar or cane sugar. Some told me that caramel and color correction were usual practice. Of course he that producer was stating that he proudly does not.

It was also a popular practice in the early 18th century to add elderberries for darker color.

[Frederick Blais]

One thing I may add. The night alway bring some more ideas :)

Plain sugar is not really needed when making port. Since the fermentation stops around 6 degree of alcohol, there is plenty of sugar left in the liquid. No need to add more.

Maybe it was used in the past, as they tried to please the english market with some artificially sweeten wine before they found the best way to achieve it.

Cane sugar and beet sugar is mainly used for the chaptelisation of some wine in the northern wine producting countries to increase the alcohol level. Sauternes and Bourgogne are 2 region often pointed for the bad use of this method.

[Nikolaj Winther]

If there's any adding of artificial sweetener, I'd imagine they'd stay clear of the raw sugars and syrups. I'd expect them to do what the french do with their VdN's - add grapejuice. That way it's also pretty hard to detect if anyone should be interested in putting it through a spectrometre.