Are cheap wines really made from grapes?

[d000hg]

Poor wines in casseroles = poor casseroles. Always use the finest ingredients in any food.

OwlHoot - so far as I know, there are no sweetened wines in the way you imagine.

People call it cooking wine for a reason

What about Buckfast, isn't that sweetened?

[d000hg]

Did a bit of digging, and it seems the practice of adding sugar to the must up front is called "chaptalization".

And adding sugar at the end is called "back sweetening". Apparently it is usually more trouble than it is worth, because if one isn't careful it restarts fermentation!

They add a lot of chemical stabilisers and fermentation inhibitors to wine for this reason (among others), also to most beer that is force-carbonated. Back sweetening is pretty common in some products, cider being a good example - the natural state of cider is to be very dry and very strong.