Vendage tardive is a French term used on Alsatian wine to denote that the grapes are literally the result of a late harvest. The wine producing region of Alsace in France primarily produces white wines. ... Species Vitis acerifolia Vitis aestivalis Vitis amurensis Vitis arizonica Vitis x bourquina Vitis californica Vitis x champinii Vitis cinerea Vitis x doaniana Vitis girdiana Vitis labrusca Vitis x labruscana Vitis monticola Vitis mustangensis Vitis x novae-angliae Vitis palmata Vitis riparia Vitis rotundifolia Vitis rupestris Vitis shuttleworthii Vitis tiliifolia Vitis...

Unlike late harvest wines from the United States or Germany, Alsacian vendage tardive wines are typically fermented to the point where they have little or no residual sugar, although there are numerous exceptions. This means that they are typically table wines rather than dessert wines. In its strictest sense, fermentation (formerly called zymnosis) is the energy-yielding anaerobic metabolic breakdown of a nutrient molecule, such as glucose, without net oxidation. ... After fermentation has ended in the process of wine making, the residual sugar (or RS) is the measure of the amount of sugars that remain unfermented in the resulting wine. ... Dessert wines are those wines which are typically served with dessert, although they are also drunk on their own, i. ...

The legal standard for vendage tardive is that the grapes have reached a certain must weight (that is, sugar content at harvest), but quality producers routinely exceed the minimum. Grapes that are substantantially riper are used for making the sweet Sélection de Grains Nobles. Must weight is a measure of the amount of sugar in grape juice (must), and hence the amount of alcohol that could potentially be produced if it is all fermented to alcohol, rather than left as residual sugar. ...