Wine Analysis Home

Fructose

• The word fructose comes from the Latin word for fruit, fructus.
  
  
• Fructose, as the name suggests is found in many fruits and at high concentrations in ripe grapes.
  
  
• Fructose is also a major sugar component of honey.
  
  
• Fructose is one of the sweetest naturally occurring sugars.
  
  
• A molecule, of fructose and glucose linked together form one molecule of sucrose.
  
  
• Fructose is a simple, single unit, Ketohexose, sugar called a monosaccharide. (see diagram).
  
  
• It is the optical isomer of fructose, d-fructose, also know by its old name levulose, that is the most common, naturally occurring form of fructose.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• The term ketohexose consists of two parts, keto- and hexose.
  
  
• Keto- in the term Kethexose stems from the word Ketose.
  
  
• A Ketose is any monosaccharide that contains a Ketone functional group in its open-chain form (Fischer projection).
  
  
• A hexose is any six carbon sugar.
  
  
• Hence an example of a ketohexose is fructose (see diagram).