Has anyone ever tasted any of these wines or have any recommendations in this category? I have a friend who can not drink alcohol and sorely misses wine.
I have tasted quite a few, and none of them really resembles wine at all. They have very little body, and when they have any, it is usually due to an obscene amount of sugar. Lautus Savvy Red has added glycerol, and an rs of only 5.3 g/L, but does have some body and was the closest to red wine that I tried. French Bloom Le Rose is sparkling and not awful, but 42 g/L of sugar.
NA beer is way better than NA wine.
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The Leitz offerings (Rieslings and Sparkling) are acceptable, but only that. I haven’t encountered any NA wine that does any of the things that make wine… wine. Aroma, taste, texture, food-compatibility…NA wine doesn’t do any of that. It’s kind of in the Alibaba-knockoff tier of quality.
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Have not tried but I know Giesen from NZ is making a huge marketing push for their lineup of de-alc’ed wine.
There are some concerns about these products’ sugar levels and potential for harboring pathogens:
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Antoine Gruau believes that the risk will be greatest if the dealcoholized wine is packaged in returnable bottles. "They are often not disinfected or controlled. In addition to conventional yeasts and bacteria, consumers may also be confronted with other pathogens in the food industry, such as Escherichia coli. »
Translated the part about pathogens. Really a stretch imo to say e. coli might end up in a product because of reusing the glass. Reusing glass has nothing to do with zero alcohol nature of the product, and same could be said for standard wines if unsanitary practices occur. 15% alcohol has some disinfecting potential, doesn’t kill all bacteria, hence spoiled wines.
*with all due deference to shitty OR Pinot Noir.
That is his maximum risk scenario.
But in the preceding paragraph he notes that our analytical practices are not at all adapted to quality control of these products, and the means of stabilizing them in the absence of alcohol potentially require big interventions, which I think are the more pertinent points.
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Wife tried many of them during pregnancy, and so I did too. Theyre not good.
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Sure, thank you. I guess manufacturers should treat these products like any other non-alcoholic beverage. Bazillions of bottles/cans are safely filled daily of milk, coke, juices, etc… Many of these are non-pasteurized beverages, but they are subject to food safety standards regardless. I work in the fruit juice industry, and it seems odd to me to predict/assume the worst with respect to bacteria for these products.
I agree the winemaker’s mindset and processes need to adjust, so maybe that is the author’s point. I’d suggest something might get lost in google translation of the original French as well.
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Yes, that’s what he’s trying to get at.
That and the fact that many of these things contain a pretty hefty dose of added sugar to render them less unpalatable.
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A pregnant friend had a bottle open recently, so I curiously tried a sip.
I’ll put it this way…imagine Meiomi or apothic red and then take it down a few notches (if one can imagine such a thing). High residual sugar and all the hallmarks of highly manipulated winemaking. Hard pass for me.
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We ran full panels on everything we tasted. The lowest rs was 5.3 g/L, the highest 122 g/L. Most were in the 20-40 range.
Beer it is!
Thanks for the feedback
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Wise choice. NA beers are lightyears ahead.
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While I can drink alcohol, I am pleased that there are more than a few acceptable NA beers to drink, and I do frequently have them when I want to restrict my booze intake but still want to drink a beer.
I recently spent two years working in non-alcoholic wine formulation and production (a bit of cider and beer, too), so I can hopefully provide some helpful information here.
The first thing I’ll say is that NA beer has come along much faster. Unsurprising, because you can brew beer quickly year-round so you can adapt recipes and trial your process much more easily than with wine. Most non-alcoholic wines on the U.S. market are still being made with wines sourced on the bulk market or otherwise not used for alcoholic brands for quality or excess volume reasons. Having said all that, to address the points raised above, I do have concerns about food safety issues that can arise in non-alcoholic beer, and its successes and rapid proliferation have not seen commensurate advances in food safety protocols. Some producers are absolutely on top of things, others are not, and it’s very difficult to know which is which. NA wine is probably not immune to food safety issues, but its much lower pH, the use of sulfites, and sterile filtration (which can’t be used in, say, an NA hazy beer) make overall food safety in NA wine much more straightforward than in beer. Still something that producers and copackers should pay more attention to, always.
Europe is ahead of the U.S. in non-alcoholic wine development, as it was with beer. I’d say the U.S. and Australia/New Zealand/South Africa are about on par with one another. Unfortunately, most of the European NA wine producers have continued to rely excessively on sugar. Most of the best examples I’ve had have had 40-60 g/L. That’s too much for most styles, but it can work for Riesling and Gewurztraminer, which is why the best NA wines I’ve had have come from Germany. Bergdolf-Reif & Nett (with whom I have no affiliation) is probably the producer that has impressed me the most: their “Reverse” Gewurztraminer is pretty close to a dead ringer for alcoholic Gewurz, but it’s not available in the U.S., and it does still have some 50-60 g/L sugar. Their Riesling is only 17 g/L, and my German uncle will be bringing me a bottle next weekend so I can try it!
The U.S. market has long been dominated by two brands, Fre and Ariel, both in the sub-$10 price point and both very juice- and sugar-forward. But a lot of smaller producers have popped up in the last 5 years or so, making non-alcoholic wines of a variety of styles, qualities, and ranges of distribution. Lots of DTC, and lots of distribution through online specialty non-alcoholic retailers.
The last issue is shelf life - and here I’m talking about quality rather than safety. A lot of non-alcoholic wine brands are insisting on packaging in cans, which is good for marketing but not for shelf life. The easiest wines to make good non-alcoholic versions of are aromatic whites, which rely more on aroma than texture. So Sauvignon Blanc has been popular, but retaining quality beyond around 6 months after packaging is tricky.
I have a great deal of hope for the future of non-alcoholic wine. There are so many easy ways to make it better that people just aren’t doing because of a lack of knowledge, experience, or interest. NA wine will never be as close to alcoholic wine as NA beer is to alcoholic beer, if for no other reason (though there are other reasons) than that wine is more reliant on alcohol for its character than beer is: you have much further to go from 14% to 0% than from 4% to 0%. Cider is a good analog, as a fermented fruit beverage that can dealcoholize beautifully.
My advice to anyone who is genuinely interested in finding good non-alcoholic wines is to just dip your toe in once or twice a year: there are dozens of new products being released every year, and they are getting better. There’s a long way to go but it’s exciting to see things moving so quickly now.
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I tried the Giesen last night…AWFUL! Tasted like grape juice mixed with vinegar.
Which one? I personally have never tried one. But as mentioned, Giesen’s PR firm sends out cases of samples weekly to ITB folks, bloggers, who knows, not my business to know. We do the fulfillment so I see it (and sometimes pick the bottles, box them up and slap the FedEx label on it).
Ben’s post here put NZ on par with the US which I guess is not the greatest endorsement…
Giesen De-Alcoholized Sauvignon Blanc. Their SB is inexpensive and not bad, so I thought I would give this a whirl when I saw it at Whole Foods. Sadly, no.
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I wanted to have some non-alcoholic options at my wedding. We had this one on hand for folks and I know some have continued to drink and enjoy it at least somewhat since then, so that’s a reasonable recommendation I figure: