Most mulled wine recipes call for an appreciable amount of sugar, or, to give it its chemical name, sucrose. The particular arrangement of the sucrose molecule, and other molecules that taste sweet, for that matter, is the reason we experience a sweet taste when we eat it. The ‘sweetness triangle’ theory states that, for a molecule to taste sweet, it must have three key areas that are specific distances apart from each other:
1 – a group of atoms which has a hydrogen available for hydrogen bonding.
2 – a group of atoms which has an oxygen atom available to form hydrogen bonds.
3 – a non-polar atom or group of atoms which doesn’t form hydrogen bonds.