What do brut and demi-sec mean?

Annex III, part A of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/33 lays down seven designations for the sugar content of sparkling wine, from brut nature to doux.

• Brut nature, also naturherb, bruto natural or pas dosé: less than 3 grams of sugar per litre, and after the second fermentation no sugar has been added.
• Extra brut, also called extra herb: 0 to 6 grams per litre.
• Brut: less than 12 grams per litre.
• Extra dry, also extra trocken or extra seco: 12 to 17 grams per litre.
• Sec, also dry or trocken: 17 to 32 grams per litre.
• Demi-sec, also halbtrocken or medium dry: 32 to 50 grams per litre.
• Doux, also sweet or dolce: more than 50 grams per litre.

The classes follow on from one another. A wine with 11 grams of sugar per litre falls under brut, a wine with 40 grams under demi-sec. Between brut and demi-sec there are therefore two more classes: extra dry and sec. These rules replaced those of Regulation (EC) No 607/2009 in 2019 and apply throughout the European Union, regardless of the country of origin.

Article 47 of Regulation (EU) 2019/33 allows a deviation of at most 3 grams of sugar per litre between what is stated on the label and what is actually in the bottle.

That margin explains why two bottles with the same designation can differ noticeably. On a scale in which brut is below 12 grams and extra dry starts at 12 grams, 3 grams is a quarter of a whole class. If a wine falls into two classes at once because of its sugar content, the producer chooses one of them; putting both words on the label is not allowed.

The statement itself is not optional. For the wine categories named in Article 119 of Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013, including sparkling wine and quality sparkling wine, the sugar class must appear on the label.

The sugar comes from two additions: the liqueur de tirage that starts the second fermentation, and the dosage that is added after disgorgement.

For champagne, the liqueur de tirage adds about 24 grams of sugar per litre to the wine, from a solution of 500 to 625 grams of rock sugar per litre. That sugar ferments completely, produces a pressure of 6 kg/cm2 at the end of fermentation and raises the alcohol content by 1.2 to 1.3 percent. European rules allow the tirage to raise the total alcohol content of the cuvée by no more than 1.5 percent by volume.

What you ultimately taste of sweetness is determined by the second addition. The liqueur d’expedition, also called dosage, goes in only after the yeast sediment has been removed from the bottle. With brut nature this step is omitted: the law requires for that designation that no sugar has been added after the second fermentation, and that the residual sugar content stays below 3 grams per litre.

No, still wine has its own list in part B of the same annex, with different limits and different words.

• Dry: at most 4 grams of sugar per litre, or at most 9 grams when the total acidity, expressed as tartaric acid, is no more than 2 grams per litre below the sugar content.
• Medium dry: a maximum of 12 grams per litre, or a maximum of 18 grams when the acidity is no more than 10 grams per litre below the sugar content.
• Medium sweet: maximum 45 grams per liter.
• Sweet: at least 45 grams per litre.

The consequence is a shift in meaning between two shelves. A still wine with 30 grams of sugar per litre is called medium sweet, whereas a sparkling wine with precisely that same content carries the designation sec. The legislator thus applies wider limits for sparkling wine than for still wine, and the words dry and sec are not interchangeable.

Look for one of the seven terms from Annex III; the law also treats foreign-language variants as equivalent per class, so you encounter the same class under different names.

Brut nature is equivalent to naturherb, bruto natural and pas dosé. Sec is equivalent to dry and trocken. Demi-sec is equivalent to halbtrocken and medium dry. Doux is equivalent to sweet and dolce. A bottle with dosage zero falls in the same group as brut nature, with less than 3 grams of sugar per litre.

Origin rules can narrow the choice further. The product file of Prosecco DOC admits only the classes from brut nature up to and including demi-sec for the spumante; for the frizzante the scale runs from dry to sweet. Such a file may therefore be stricter than the European basic rule, never more lenient.