Wine is too dry

[Lynyrd Skynyrd]

My first attempt ended up with the wine way too dry. Don’t know if I didn’t start with enough sugar, or if I let it ferment too long. I’m waiting on a hydrometer to arrive to test %,, but my question is how do I sweeten it up?

 

[sour_grapes]

The conventional approach is to "stabilize" the wine by adding potassium sorbate. This will not kill any yeast in your wine, but it prevents them from reproducing. Then you can add sugar to your liking.

In general, that is the way we home winemakers have to operate anyway. It is difficult to stop an active fermentation. We generally always let it go to dry, then stabilize and backsweeten later.

 

[Rice_Guy]

Dry normally equates to we are tasting acid molecules. Acidity is measured as total acidity, in the US as grams of tartaric acid per liter. Less acid per liter will be sensed as sweetener. More acid per liter will be sensed as more acidic, or more dry.
A technique that removes acid like MLF will be sweeter. Using more water per pound of fruit will also seem sweeter.

 

[ChuckD]

Don’t know if I didn’t start with enough sugar, or if I let it ferment too long

As @sour_grapes said, it’s very difficult to stop the yeast mid-fermentation. You can, of course, add more sugar than the yeast can tolerate and they may die before consuming it all, but that is a crap shoot. You may just end up with really high alcohol dry wine or with some residual sugar. Problem is, there’s no way to know how sweet it will be. Better to ferment dry, stabilize, and do bench tests to determine how much sugar to add back.