Dosage
Winemaking · Beginner · 3 min read
Dosage, in the sparkling wine world, is the small amount of sweet wine added to a bottle just before the final cork is inserted, after disgorgement of the lees. It is the winemaker's main tool for adjusting the sweetness of the finished wine and for smoothing the often sharp, lees-driven character of a freshly disgorged bottle.
What the dosage is made of
The dosage is a mixture of the same wine (or a similar reserve wine) and a small amount of sugar, traditionally dissolved in the wine to make a liqueur d'expédition. Some houses use plain sugar syrup; others use a concentrated must from the same grape variety. The base wine in the dosage is usually from older reserve stocks, so the dosage contributes a small amount of mature complexity as well as sweetness.
The amount of sugar in the dosage defines the sweetness category on the label. A Brut Nature wine has no dosage, or just a tiny topping-up dose of straight wine. A Brut might have 6 to 10 grams per litre of sugar in the dosage. A Demi-Sec could have 30 to 50 grams.
Why dosage matters
After disgorgement, a sparkling wine is often surprisingly sharp. The lees ageing has stripped the wine of a little fruit and left a taut, yeasty character. The dosage softens this, restoring a little fruit, integrating the acids and smoothing the texture. It is the final artistic decision of the winemaker, and it is what turns a base wine into a finished bottle.
For English sparkling, dosage levels are typically in the Brut to Extra Brut range, with a growing band of Brut Nature wines for the more austere, mineral style. The UK consumer has shifted firmly towards drier wines over the last decade, mirroring the Champagne trend.
The liqueur de dosage
Technically, the dose added to the bottle after disgorgement is called the liqueur d'expédition, the expedition liqueur, and it is the final blend. The liqueur de tirage, on the other hand, is the sugar and yeast mixture added to the base wine at bottling to trigger the second fermentation. The two are different solutions with different purposes, and the winemaker handles them at different stages of the process.
How dosage is calculated
Dosage is calculated in grams of sugar per litre of finished wine. A typical English Brut might have 8 grams of sugar per litre, added as around 6 millilitres of a 200 gram per litre sugar solution per 750 millilitre bottle. Larger producers use automatic dosing machines, while smaller ones use a peristaltic pump or a graduated pipette.
The winemaker must also account for the volume of the dosage itself. Adding 6 millilitres of liquid to a 750 millilitre bottle dilutes the wine slightly, which is why the dosage is usually a small amount of concentrated solution rather than a larger amount of weak liquid.
UK labelling and consumer notes
The back label of an English sparkling wine will list the dosage category, the disgorgement date and sometimes the exact dosage level in grams per litre. Consumers who want the driest possible wine should look for the words Brut Nature or Zero Dosage. The WineGB producer directory lists dosage information for most major English wines.