Improving on nature
It is at the fermentation stage, red or white, thet the winemaker decides whether or not to add acid or sugar. To many wine drinkers this may sound like cheating. Many winemakers, on the other habnd, maintain it is essential to achieving a well-balanced wine. French winemakers, apart from those in the far south, have been adding sugar to fermentation vats to increase the alcohol content (not sweetnes) of the final wine for 200 years ever since this process, now called chaptalization, was proposed by the agriculture minister Jean-Antoine Chaptal.