Fruit wine and alcohol-free wines really are also wines

Recently a commentary appeared in Australia: C’mon, is alcohol-free wine really even wine? This noted that: “I see no-alcohol wine has become a thing. What’s next? No-grape wine?”

This is perhaps the silliest discussion I have seen on the internet for a long time; and, believe me, I have seen plenty of very silly ones. Both alcohol-free and non-grape wines make perfect sense. That is, the concept of “wine” is not restricted to grapes, nor is it restricted to grape wines that have not had their alcohol removed. Let’s take each of these two ideas in turn, during which I will present a couple of bits of information about myself..

Non-grape wine

Wine can, of course, be made from any fruit at all, not just grapes. Wine is fermented fruit juice, or, more strictly, the fermented sugars in that juice. This process can be performed naturally (ie. in nature) as well as artificially (ie. in a purpose-built container). Fermentation occurs because there are naturally occurring yeasts on the grapes and other fruits to ferment them, or those yeasts have accumulated in places where fermentation is already occurring.

Technically, fermentation is simply the action of enzymes that produce chemical changes in organic substrates. It can be more narrowly defined as the extraction of energy from carbohydrates in the absence of oxygen. Humans have used fermentation to produce foodstuffs and beverages since the Neolithic age. For example, fermentation is used to produce the lactic acid found in pickled vegetables (and silage versus hay), and yogurt, as well as for producing the ethanol in alcoholic beverages (wine and beer).

Primates (apes, monkeys, humans, etc) have long been recorded to have a predilection for fermented juices, as well as unfermented ones; and they do not seem to care much about what fruits are used, so long as the juices taste nice. In this case, the desired end-product of ethanol is an edible form of alcohol, which has interesting psycho-active effects.

More to the point, non-grape wines can last just as long as any of the fancy wines modern people make from grapes. My wife and I have made non-grape wines for a couple of decades, now. [Actually, my wife is the winemaker, and I just assist.*] Indeed, we have recently (2022) been tasting a selection of the older ones; and they are all still pretty good:

• Green gooseberry 2003
• Green gooseberry 2004
• Green gooseberry 2008
• Green gooseberry 2009
• Green gooseberry and strawberry 2008
• Red gooseberry and strawberry 2008
• Cherry 2011

Yes, you read those dates right. My wife and I agreed that the 2003 wine was still very nice, but she was more doubtful about the 2004. All except the cherry wine were made with Sauternes yeast, so that the result is fairly sweet; and these wines are best consumed with a non-sweet dessert (such as fresh fruit and cream). The cherry wine was made dry; and can be had as a pre-dinner drink, or with certain appetizers.

It is, indeed, true that if you ferment apple juice then it is usually referred to as “cider”, and if you ferment honey then it is called “mead”; and fermented rice has many local names throughout Asia.** But there are not many exceptions to simply calling the product of fermented sugars “wine”, unless it is beer (This craft brewing star is making high-end Napa wine but treating it like beer). I am ignoring here, for the moment, the idea of brewing cane sugar, to produce the alcohol used for hard seltzers.***

Low- and no-alcohol wines

Alcohol in wine is sometimes seen as a taboo topic, mostly because the relationship of Wine and health is never a simple topic. In turn, this complexity arises because alcohol has potential health effects of many various sorts (Wine and health — why is there so much argument, pro and con?). Perhaps the biggest issue is that it is entirely possible to be an alcoholic — after all, we can over-indulge in anything, from alcohol to sugar to transportation speed — and over-indulgence often leads to an early death (that is how over-indulgence is defined, medically). ****

Now, we are never likely to resolve this topic (Why we are never going to know whether wine is good for us, or not), but we can at least address the issue thoughtfully (Alcohol consumption carries significant health risks and no benefits for young people; some older adults may benefit from drinking a small amount of alcohol). One obvious thoughtful response is to be careful about the amount of alcohol in our wines; and hence the widespread interest in low- and no-alcohol versions.

No-alcohol (and low-alcohol) wine is made in a straightforward way. First you make perfectly normal wine; and then you remove some of the alcohol. The resulting beverage will not taste exactly the same (Are alcohol-free wines drinkable, by wine drinkers?), but its health effect will certainly be different, and probably much better for you.

This removal can be done by the use of technology, most commonly spinning cones (How Bob Trinchero unwittingly transformed the Italian wine industry when he released his first alcohol-removed wine) or reverse osmosis (Top advances in wine technology and what they mean to us). In either case, the end product is still a wine, in the sense that a wine is made, and then modified. The modification does not stop it from being a wine, any more than removing a set of (cancerous) ovaries stops a person from being a woman. Modifications are used for a reason!

Mind you, not all low- or non-alcohol wines are necessarily alike. Low-alcohol wine is usually defined as having alcohol by volume (ABV) of 12% or less, with anything below 10% considered very low (What is low alcohol wine?). In this sense, some wines are naturally low in alcohol, while others have had their alcohol removed.

From the point of wine commentators, the issue seems to be one of technology versus nature (Does technology trump terroir in the vineyard?):

Over the past two decades, the use of technology in both the vineyard and the cellar has exploded — though what does this mean for the transparency of wines as a whole? Are technological developments robbing wine of its authenticity?

This is a reasonable point of view; but I doubt that it will ever trump health as a criterion for choosing a beverage.

According to Wine Intelligence, “purchasing a wine that states it is lower in alcohol” is of interest to around a quarter of drinkers in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia. Moreover, a recent IWSR study forecast the no- and low-alcohol wine category to grow at least 31% by 2024. So, we might as well get used to it. However, this trend is in apparent contrast to the ready-to-drink (RTD) category, which continues to grow, but with more brands introducing products with higher ABV (Half of all new ready-to-drink beverages have an ABV of 5% or higher).

Conclusion

Alcohol can be made from any source of sugar at all. If the source is a fruit, then the product is wine; it is a simple as that. If the wine made has more alcohol than the consumer wants, then some or all of it can be removed. One might have a fine philosophical discussion about whether this stops it being a wine, but this would not be a practical discussion. There is, after all, the old saying: “I used to think drinking was bad for me … so I gave up thinking.”

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* Or “supervise”, as my wife-of-25-years prefers to describe it — those of you with husbands will know what she means!

** Note: non-fermented apple juice is sometimes also called “cider”.

*** The first commercial example of this style was Two Dogs, brewed in Australia in 1993, and widely claimed to be the “world’s first brewed alcoholic lemonade”.

**** Back when I was younger, a dinner party was arranged so that males and females alternated around the table (with partners definitely not next to each other). The idea was that the male on one side of each female engaged her in conversation, while the male on the other side filled up her wine glass. This way, she never knew how much wine she had drunk. Meals were no just about food, you know!

The women were in on this, too, of course. After all, they couldn't just bang their glass on the table, yelling “Fill ’er up. I didn't come here just for the conversation, you know.” No, they had to get their fair share while maintaining some decorum; and playing along was the simplest way to do that.

This may explain why younger generations don't drink as much wine as their elders. How is a young woman going to get a decent amount of wine, these days, while keeping her dignity? If the young males are not playing a suitable social game (and they do not seem to be doing the same as their parents), then either the decorum or the wine has to be sacrificed. Sadly for the wine industry, a decision seems to have been made.