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North Carolina’s major wine festivals are winding down, leaving me wondering: What hath wineries wrought with doctored-up confectionery concoctions that elicit oohhs and aahhs from tipsy festival-goers?

North Carolina’s wine industry — 10th largest in the country — is divided into two camps:

• The muscadine family of grapes that grow down east and in parts of the Piedmont. North Carolina has centuries of tradition growing these musky, slippery-skinned grapes with heady aroma and distinctive flavor.

• The vinifera family of grapes — Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot, etc. By the mid-1990s, many predicted vinifera would change America’s perception of North Carolina wine. The Tar Heel state, many predicted, would takes its rightful place alongside New York’s Finger Lakes, Washington State, and California wine regions.

I suggest a third camp — much smaller than muscadine and vini­fera — but its influence is growing, even as it grows neither vine nor purchases North Carolina grapes.

This camp of “virtual wineries” minimizes overhead, long-term debt and risk by turning grape concentrates and fruit from Chile, Spain, France, and even California into a wine product. From these concentrates come dozens of wildly colorful wines — adjusted with a little acid here, sulfites there, and often a healthy dollop of sugar.

It’s a sweet business model in the Deep Dixie. Doubt it? Just look at the crowds in recent years standing 10 deep at festival tents serving up this sugary brew.

Vinifera growers — serious about drier styled wines — first looked on this with angst and anger. But they too saw a distinct camp of enthusiast emerging — and growing.

That sweet-tooth market is one that vinifera growers cannot overlook.

Many serious wine enthusiasts initially come to wine via wine coolers and fermented fruit products. These decidedly un-serious wines are often a bridge to a lifelong loyalty to upscale, solidly-crafted vinifera. But even if many un-serious wine drinkers never transition to Chardonnay and Merlot, they are customers, right here and now. And land-holding wineries have a bank to answer to, right here and now.

Figuring if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-the-cash-flow, the vinifera wineries are adding sweet wines to their arsenal to satisfy the “watcha-got-that’s-sweet” clamoring.

They often do this with secondary grapes like Niagara, Symphony, or Muscat Canelli or with vinifera too young, too diluted, too desiccated — all of which can be masked with sugar.

This fast-fix formula has even crept into red N.C. wines.

One grower-winemaker — a serious vinifera producer — recently confessed how his gold-medal-winning sweet red wine came about: The grapes swelled and burst from a late rain. Those not diluted were mushy and near rot.

How to salvage the fruit? Just add sugar. Hey, there’s a bank to answer to.

At a recent wine festival, one grape grower introduced me to an unusual red.

“You’ve heard how chocolate goes so well with Cabernet Sauvignon,” he asked. “Well, I’ve done one better: a Cabernet Sauvignon that tastes like chocolate.”

Amazed at the overpowering cocoa and milk chocolate, I asked: “How did you do this?”

Easy. Just add chocolate extract.

At several festival tents, I tasted Chardonnay-based wines decidedly sweet. How did they do that? Some Muscat Canelli and sugar go a long way.

At another tent, I tasted “sweet Riesling” from new vines. Often Riesling is perceived as sweet because of its genetic apple and melon fruit flavors — and a splash of unfermented Riesling juice (sugars not yet converting to alcohol and carbon dioxide) that is added back. This is Germany’s often classic (and natural) recipe.What this North Carolina Riesling lacked in balanced acidity was made up for in cloying sweetness. How did this wine manage a 5 percent residual sugar level?

Easy. Just add sugar.

There is a place for sweeter wines, if only as a starter for new initiates.

And there are pragmatic reasons to chase a dollar because banks holding mortgages care not one whit whether Cabernet Sauvignon goes stag or hooks up with a Hershey bar.

That’s reality now. But what will reality — if reality is perception — look like in 10 years?

Not so long ago, North Carolina wine seemed poised as a player on a national stage. But this recent gimmickry with confection and extract seems a slippery slope for vinifera producers.

This alchemy leaves me wondering: Is the long-term success of North Carolina vinifera at risk because of short-term cash flow?

* * * * *

A handful of reds and whites to think about this summer.

2006 Garnacha de Fuego Old Vines ($9): This is a Grenache from Spain at its blue-collar-roots-for-a-red best. We found it locally at Fresh Market. Dark cherry, raspberry, anise and a peppery spice. Blockbuster at the price.

2007 Veramonte Casablanca Valley Chardonnay Reserva ($10): From Chile comes a luscious style of Chard with melon, guava, pear and vanilla flavors and aromas.

2007 Trumpeter Malbec Familia Rutini ($11): Juicy blackberry, dark cherry, and raisin. This Malbec from the Argentina’s Mendoza region is an attention-getter

2007 St. Hallet Poacher’s Blend ($12): A medley of Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon from Australia’s Barossa region, this blend has been popular among U.S. consumers for the last five years running. Apple, lime and flowers swim in the glass.

2007 Laurenz Five Gruner Veltliner Sophie Singing ($15): This crisp white finishes with a slight peppery quality — hallmark of Gruner Veltliner. Layered in between is apple, lemon-lime and peach. Gruner Veltliner is the signature wine grape of Austria.

Ed Williams is director of public information & marketing at Alamance Community College. This column publishes the first Wednesday of each month. If you have news of a wine event, e-mail williamsonwine@gmail.com