White wine
How sweet a white wine tastes depends on one thing: how much sugar the yeast turns into alcohol during fermentation. If almost all of it is converted, you have a dry wine. If sugar remains, you'll taste it. Below, we've lined up six bottles, from dry to sweet, with the glass to serve them in.
White wine by grape
You'll find these four grapes in almost every wine aisle, from bone-dry to dessert-sweet. We've made a separate page for each grape, covering its flavor, food pairings, and glassware.
Chardonnay
From an oak barrel, it's smooth and buttery, with vanilla and caramel notes. From a steel tank, it's lighter and fresher.
About Chardonnay →Sauvignon blanc
Citrus, green apple, gooseberry, and a hint of herbs. Always a great match for goat cheese and vegetables.
About Sauvignon Blanc →
Verdejo
The signature grape 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
Green or yellow grapes are used for white wine, sometimes even blue ones. That’s possible because grape juice is always colorless. The color is in the skin. With white wine, the skins do not go into fermentation, so the wine stays light and often tastes fresh and fruity. Look at the rest of the shelf and you can see how it works. For rosé, the skins stay in the must for eight to fourteen hours, and the longer they stay, the darker the wine. With red wine, they ferment together for the entire process. 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 the first 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 to the fore. If fermentation stops sooner, residual sugar remains, and you can taste it. For this, winemakers usually choose grapes that are naturally high in sugar. Riesling shows well that one grape can go either way. 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 on the label. The winemaker’s style says more.
In brief
Six bottles, from dry to sweet
They all look the same in the glass. But they taste very different. The further down you go, the more sugar remains in the wine and the lower the alcohol content.
Pinot Grigio
Smooth and fresh. You can taste peach, grapefruit, and lime with a touch of spice, and the finish is soft and long. It usually contains very little residual sugar, so this is 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 sweet 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 wood, which makes them much fuller.
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 quite a lot 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 fizz, made from the muscat grape Muscat d'Alexandrie. You can smell orange blossom and mandarin. This is the sweetest bottle of the six and, at 5.5 percent, the lightest too.
Red and rosé are made from exactly the same colorless juice. The only difference is that 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 grassy note. Sweet wines lean toward apricot, peach, honey and orange blossom.
Fresh or rounded
There's hardly any sugar left in a dry white wine, so it tastes fresh and a little tart. If it contains residual sugar, the wine feels rounder and fuller. In riesling, the high acidity balances this out.
Vanilla & butter
Age 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 with that: the right temperature, how you hold the glass and how full you pour it.
Chill to 8 to 12 degrees
Fresh, fruity white wine tastes best 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; unoaked chardonnay 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 so your hand doesn't warm the wine. The bowl captures the aromas and lets them circulate. Pour white wine just above the widest part of the bowl, no more. Wine that gets lukewarm smells less fresh.
To the glasses →Store after opening
Most wines oxidize within three to four days of being opened. A handy trick is to pour the rest into a plastic bottle and squeeze it until the wine is almost at the top. It will then keep for a few days to a week in the fridge. A vacuum pump works too. Store unopened bottles on their sides so the cork doesn’t dry out.
More on storage →Cocktails with a white sparkle
Still white wine is almost never used in cocktails. You simply drink it from the glass. These four all feature sparkling white wine, making them the closest match to the lightly sweet Moscato above.
Bellini
Peach purée at the bottom of the glass, then slowly top up with a 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 for longer in a slimmer glass. A bowl with some room lets the aromas develop. These are the glasses we recommend.
Questions about white wine
Can’t find your question? Browse our cocktail recipes or get in touch.
Go to the cocktail recipes →What’s 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 of white wine are in a bottle?
How long does a bottle of white wine keep?
Buy white wine
Want the bottle delivered straight to your door? Order white wine online at Gall & Gall. Gall & Gall has 599 options, including 1 on sale.
Prices as of November 6, 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 costs you nothing extra. No 18, no alcohol.
