Has anyone tried Non? There’s a Food & Wine article that says it’s very good, which of course I take with a grain of salt, but maybe less bad than the others? It says 7g sugar per serving, which I assume comes out to about 47g/L
They’re somewhere between Proxies and Kally, using fruits and spices to create a more “adult” non-alcoholic beverage that has tartness, bitterness, texture, and some depth of flavor. I find them noticeably salty, which I’m not a big fan of, but they’re interesting for sure. Of course, they don’t taste anything like wine.
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Recently discovered a phenomenal NA option but it’s only available in DC since it’s not exported. Dihydrogen monoxide is used to create pretty pure flavors without any of the RS. Not sure if other parts of the country have tried this yet.
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Also there are about 300 restaurants that will sell you a really incredible NA cocktail that includes upwards of $2 of ingredients for just shy of $35 with tax and tip. Sign me up!
A friend sent me this link, not sure how new it might prove to the conversation. https://www.just-food.com/sponsored/the-next-step-in-the-evolution-of-wine-dealcoholisation/
Has anyone tried French Bloom?
I ve tried maybe 15 different NA wines, 3 even blind without knowing … unexciting/uninspiring is an exaggeration … I don’t want/need such a beverage, rather drink (na) beer, juice, cider or mineral water.
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Coming late to this thread, I’m surprised to see only one mention of Leitz. My wife has given up alcohol and finds these wines to be the best option, after trying many. I do agree that the Leitz selections (still and sparkling) seem to be of good quality, and not high in sugar.
That said, we have not found any red wines that would really please an avid traditional red drinker.
My wife has been enjoying Aaron Pott’s line up of non-a wines sold under the name “Missing “Thorn”. You can find them through Amazon and Gary’s wine.
Funny bc I think 0 alcohol and gluten free beer is crushing it.
Yes but not since last year and it may have changed since then. It was pleasant enough but too sweet for my taste. If memory serves the sugar was somewhere around 40-50 g/L, which is common for the most recent generation of NA wines in Europe. The pricing is aspirational, to be sure.
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Funny you ask. I haven’t had it but out of the blue my buddy that knows I have an interest in NA wines texted me and said that it “gets buzz but it’s terrible. Doesn’t taste good”. Take that for what it’s worth
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Thanks for your very informative post, Ben. I’m curious what you think are the ways NA wine could be improved?
Sure, I can give you my spiel, which isn’t everything, but hey I have to keep some of my competitive advantage in the field 
Almost no-one grows grapes, makes picking decisions, or makes wine with the intent of making non-alcoholic wine. This was almost universally true five years ago, and is starting to change, but slowly. Most people are still sourcing wine on the bulk market, or they’re using non-alc as an outlet when they’re long on a wine (and this isn’t just the big guys either - lots of people are long on wine because sales are down). Natural flavors have historically helped smooth over the inherent differences in variably sourced base wines, but the result isn’t wine-like: there are very few natural flavors that I’ve ever come across that integrate well with a wine. This is also changing as flavor production adapts to meet the growing market, but that’s a big topic that I won’t get into here.
Dealcoholizing a wine concentrates everything else, simply because you’re removing 12-15% of the volume in alcohol, and dealcoholization is not perfectly efficient so you lose some water, too. So if your TA is 6 g/L before dealc, it’s going to be 7-8 g/L afterwards, depending on the dealc method. In Europe it is common practice to balance this with 30-50 g/L of sugar, which also provides body. Well, now you have something that is sweet-and-sour, not very wine-like. It can work with a naturally fruity, off-dry style (see this Gewurztraminer, which I mentioned in my post up-thread), but does not work in, say, a Pinot Noir. In the U.S., most of the quality-minded producers are settling somewhere in the 10-25 g/L range but are either deacidifying or releasing quite sharp, high-acid wines. So better acid management, starting in the vineyard, is an easy quality improvement. Anyone who’s grown grapes or made wine can think of half a dozen ways to turn this dial, some of which are better than others.
In between picking and packaging, the biggest variable should be winemaking choices to produce wines that will dealcoholize well. Hopefully one day it will be. However, the actual biggest problem right now is the quality chain from alcoholic wine to bottled non-alcoholic wine. Until the last few years, pretty much none of the dealcoholization facilities or technologies out there were designed for making non-alcoholic wine; they were designed for alcohol adjustment but then found a secondary use for complete alcohol removal to meet the (tiny) market need. Now this is changing as the NA market grows. Several new designs have come out in recent years and yet more are in development, both standalone units that a winery can buy and larger, centralized processing facilities. All are some form of vacuum distillation or osmosis. Some are great, some are not, but the best offer a level of quality that is a step up from what we had before. The key improvements are (1) lower-temperature processing to retain quality, (2) better oxygen management to retain quality, (3) improved alcohol-removal efficiency to reduce volume loss, and (4) aroma preservation and/or recovery to retain quality.
Lastly, bottling a non-alcoholic wine is not the same as bottling an alcoholic wine. Your standard winery sanitation protocols and wine bottling line - mobile or stationary - are specced for wine. They cannot easily meet the microbial control needs of a non-alcoholic wine, which has no alcohol and some sugar. Fortunately, the low pH of most non-alcoholic wine means that food safety is rarely a concern, but refermentation, or unwanted ML in bottle has prevented many an intended NA wine release - or, worse, sent spritzy bottles and cans into the hands of consumers. Because NA wine is still a small market, until recently there has been no economic incentive to build dedicated NA wine packaging facilities. Most NA wine producers can’t meet the MOQs of food copackers, many of which aren’t set up for the specific handling requirements of wine anyway. So many folks are reliant on (mostly small) alcoholic beverage copackers, which introduces another link in the chain where something can go wrong.
The logistics problems are already better than they were and will continue to smooth out as the market grows and matures. I remember when kombucha was like this - refermentation and stinky bottles and a lot of people getting turned off. Nowadays it’s pretty much under control. Unfortunately, at the moment a lot of people are having bad experiences with non-alcoholic wines that are bad because the wine was not handled properly and is not tasting as it should. But because they don’t know how it should taste, and they are expecting it to taste bad anyway, they just write off NA wine. I always just say, give it a few years and try again.
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Fascinating! Thanks for all the info.
Glad I have no reason to shun wines with alcohol. 
We haven’t tried a ton, but the best NA wine we’ve found is Ish sparkling rose. Sparkling wines seem to offer more forgiveness on flavor and rose even more so.
We tried the Dr. L NA Riesling and found it fairly acidic and odd tasting. They make a sparkling version that we haven’t tried yet.
Do you have a brand and any red options?
I drink wine because of the good taste.
If it doesn’t taste good I don’t need wine at all.
NA wine usually tastes aweful - I had a single one that I’d call drinkable as a beverage, but not good as wine.
I’d prefer (NA) beer or water.
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Bump in case anyone has made any new discoveries.