Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine

By Jancis Robinson

Published 2006

  • About

Brix, scale of measuring total dissolved compounds in grape juice, and therefore its approximate concentration of grape sugars. It is used in the United States and, like other scales used elsewhere (see baumé and oechsle), it can be measured with either a refractometer or hydrometer. Degrees Brix indicate the percentage of solutes (of which about 90% are sugars in ripe grapes) by weight in the liquid, at a temperature specified for the instrument used. One degree Brix corresponds approximately to 10 g/l sugar.