White wine
How sweet a white wine tastes depends on one thing: how much sugar the yeast converts into alcohol during fermentation. If it converts almost all of it, you get a dry wine. If sugar remains, you'll taste it. Below, we've lined up six bottles from dry to sweet, along with the glass to serve them in.
White wine by grape variety
You'll find these four grape varieties in almost every wine aisle, from bone dry to dessert-sweet. We've created a separate page for each grape variety covering its flavor, food pairings, and the right glass.
Chardonnay
From an oak barrel, it's smooth and buttery, with vanilla and caramel notes. From a stainless steel tank, it's lighter and fresher.
About Chardonnay →Sauvignon blanc
Citrus, green apple, gooseberry, and a touch of herbs. Always a great match for goat cheese and vegetables.
About Sauvignon Blanc →
Verdejo
The signature grape variety of Rueda. You'll taste green melon, citrus, fennel, and white peach.
About Verdejo →
Moscato
The Muscat grape is behind many dessert wines. Think apricot, peach, orange, and vanilla.
About Moscato →The juice is colorless; the skin makes the difference
White wine is made from green or yellow grapes, sometimes even blue ones. That’s possible because grape juice is always colorless. The color is in the skin. With white wine, the skins don’t go into fermentation, so the wine stays light and often tastes fresh and fruity. Look at the rest of the shelf and you’ll see how it works. For rosé, the skins remain in the must for eight to fourteen hours, and the longer they stay, the darker the wine. With red wine, they ferment together the whole time. So white, rosé and red all come from the same colorless juice, and only diverge when the skins are involved. White wine is filtered after primary fermentation and then usually rests for a few months in stainless steel tanks.
Dryness or sweetness is determined by when fermentation stops. If almost all the sugar is converted into alcohol, little remains and citrus and apple come through. If fermentation stops sooner, residual sugar remains and you can taste it. To make these wines, winemakers usually choose grapes that are naturally high in sugar. Riesling shows how one grape can go in two different directions. The acidity is always high, but the wine can be dry or sweet. And Chenin Blanc is made in every style, from bone-dry to sweet. So you can’t rely blindly on the grape variety on the label. The winemaker’s style tells you more.
In brief
Six bottles, from dry to sweet
They all look the same in the glass. Still, they taste very different. The further down you go, the more sugar is left in the wine and the lower the alcohol content.
Pinot Grigio
Smooth and fresh. You can taste peach, grapefruit and lime with a hint of spice, and the finish is soft and long. It usually contains very little residual sugar, so it’s often the driest bottle in the lineup.
Sauvignon blanc
Citrus, freshly cut grass and gooseberries, and easy to drink. It’s crisp and fresh, with high acidity and usually less sweetness than a Chardonnay.
Verdejo
Juicy and fruity, with tropical fruit, lemon, fennel and green herbs. Verdejo comes from Rueda in northern Spain. Some of these wines are aged in oak, which makes them much fuller-bodied.
Oaked Chardonnay
Half of this full-bodied wine spent six months in oak. You can smell and taste it straight away: vanilla, butter and toffee, with pineapple, papaya, peach and lemon around them.
Riesling Spätlese
The Riesling grapes for this wine are harvested late in the Ürziger Würzgarten vineyard, and plenty of residual sugar remains. The wine is sweet and fruity. At 7.5 percent alcohol, it’s much lighter than the dry bottles above.
Moscato
A lightly sweet wine with a soft sparkle, made from the Muscat d'Alexandrie grape. You can smell orange blossom and mandarin. This is the sweetest of the six bottles and, at 5.5 percent, also the lightest.
Red and rosé wine are made from exactly the same colourless juice. Only the skins go into the vat too.
Fresh from the acidity, as sweet as fermentation allows
Citrus & white fruit
A dry bottle smells of citrus, green apple, pear and herbs, sometimes with a hint of grass. Sweet wines lean toward apricot, peach, honey and orange blossom.
Fresh or round
There’s barely any sugar left in a dry white wine, so it tastes fresh and a little acidic. With residual sugar, the wine feels rounder and fuller. Riesling’s high acidity balances it out.
Vanilla & butter
Age your Chardonnay in oak and it becomes full and rich, with vanilla, butter and sometimes caramel. From a stainless-steel tank, the same grape tastes more like a fresh Pinot Gris or Sauvignon Blanc.
This is what an average dry white wine looks like. Oaked Chardonnay scores higher in body. A spätlese or moscato scores much higher in sweetness.
How to pour white wine
White wine should be cold when poured into the glass and stay cold. Three things help: the right temperature, how you hold the glass and how full you pour it.
Chill to 8 to 12 degrees
Fresh, fruity white wine is best enjoyed at 8 to 10 degrees. Allow about three hours in the fridge. Full-bodied or aromatic wines can be served at 10 to 12 degrees. Then an hour and a half to two hours of chilling is enough, or take the bottle out of the fridge half an hour beforehand. Oaked Chardonnay is at its best at 12 degrees, while stainless-steel Chardonnay is best at 7 to 10.
From dry to sweet →Hold by the stem
Every wine glass has a base, a stem and a bowl. Hold the glass by the stem and your hand won’t warm the wine. The bowl captures the aromas and lets them swirl around. Pour white wine just above the widest part of the bowl, no further. Wine that warms up smells less fresh.
To the glasses →Store after opening
Most wines oxidize after being open for three to four days. A handy trick is to pour the remainder into a plastic bottle and squeeze it until the wine is almost at the top. It will then keep in the fridge for a few days to a week. A vacuum pump works too. Store unopened bottles on their sides so the cork doesn't dry out.
More about storage →Cocktails with sparkling white wine
Still white wine is hardly ever used in cocktails. You simply drink it from a glass. These four all feature sparkling white wine, making them the closest match to the lightly sweet Moscato mentioned above.
Bellini
Peach purée in the bottom of the glass, then slowly top up with dry sparkling wine.
Hugo Spritz
Elderflower syrup, sparkling wine, sparkling water, and mint over plenty of ice.
Mimosa
Half orange juice, half bubbles, and nothing else needed.
Kir Royal
A splash of crème de cassis topped up with dry sparkling wine.The right glass for white wine
White wine stays cool longer in a slimmer glass. A bowl with a little room lets the aroma develop. These are the glasses we recommend ourselves.
Questions about white wine
Can't find your question here? Browse our cocktail recipes or get in touch.
Go to the cocktail recipes →What is the difference between dry and sweet white wine?
Is Chardonnay sweet or dry?
Is Sauvignon Blanc sweet or dry, and what about Pinot Grigio?
Which white wine is the sweetest?
At what temperature should you serve white wine?
How many glasses are in a bottle of white wine?
How long does a bottle of white wine last?
Buy white wine
Want the bottle delivered straight to your door? Order white wine online at Gall & Gall. Gall & Gall has 587, including 1 on sale.
Prices as of November 10, 2026, as provided by Gall & Gall. You can see the current price and availability at Gall & Gall. Glazen.nl receives a small commission if you buy something through these links; it won’t cost you anything extra. No 18, no alcohol.
