So, low- and no-alcohol drinks are therefore now becoming quite popular. In my teenage years, I had borrowed my mother’s car in order to get my mates and I to the nearest pub on Friday night, and so I did not drink alcohol back then. This meant that I had to drink a lemon squash, or occasionally an orange juice, since most alternatives had alcohol in them.
Those days are gone (or I wouldn’t be writing this post); and that is the subject of this post.
Recently, my wife and I celebrated 26 years since we met*, with an extremely good meal at the Picnic restaurant, in Uppsala (Sweden). Because we had driven there, we had a Nozeco non-alcohol sparkling wine with the meal. It was the only such wine that the restaurant had on it’s list. This wine is quite cheap and therefore tastes rather uninteresting. This type of thing is the (unfortunate) situation that the wine industry of the immediate future needs to address.
How do we go about making low- and no-alcohol wines that taste interesting? After all, as I have previously noted: Fruit wine and alcohol-free wines really are also wines.
Unfortunately, it has been noted that most reduced-alcohol wines are made through a mechanical process that also strips out some flavour, often making them unsatisfying for drinkers (Are alcohol-free wines drinkable, by wine drinkers?). As discussed in that link, the process usually involves the two steps of first fermenting the wine normally, and then trying to remove some or all of the alcohol. Alcohol can, for example, be evaporated from the finished wine (e.g. using a spinning cone).
An alternative is making the wine with less alcohol in the first place. For example, one can pick the grapes very early, before they produce much sugar; or stop fermentation with, say, 35 g of residual sugar. Lower-alcohol wines are also more common in cooler climates (e.g. Germany, Austria, New Zealand), since their grapes do not become super-ripe. Also, those natural wines made with native yeasts also tend to have lower alcohol, as the yeasts are often less efficient at boosting alcohol.
One other recent suggestion has been that careful vine-canopy management may be crucial (Doctored leaves the key to low-alcohol wines) — the idea is to pull off (say) the top third of leaves, so that the vines produces less sugar, and thus produce less alcohol, even though the grapes ripen normally.
We have therefore been told that: “While non-alcoholic wines have been around for years, new techniques that can retain aromas and textures are moving forward, with German research and producers at the forefront, creating higher quality N.A. wines” (Nonalcoholic wines: Emerging innovators and big guns enter the growing $56 million+ category). We need to hope that this innovation does, indeed, produce something good.
Interestingly, Bob Campbell (at The Real Review), recently discussed whether wine shows should have a separate class for entries that have no, or very little, alcohol (NOLO). At the New Zealand International Wine Show, he and his colleagues decided, for the moment, “to mix the NOLO wines amongst the standard alcohol wines without identifying them to the judges. Each will stand on its own merit.” Currently, this will be a tough ask for the wines.
It has also been noted (State of the International Wine Market in 2022: New market trends for wines require new strategies) that: “While the OIV has released a definition of dealcoholized wines, the permitted oenological practices are still in discussion. Low-alcohol wines are not as clearly legally defined yet, and cannot be legally called ‘wines’ in many regions. Often, their classification depends on the national rules for wine taxes, if they depend on the level of alcohol, such as in the UK or Scandinavia.”
Sadly for the wine industry, beer and cider are obvious ways to go if we want lower alcoholic drinks, since they are made that way naturally, rather than having to be modified in some way. Indeed: “According to 2022 Nielsen data, beer makes up the vast majority of N.A. sales off premise, with 85 percent of the N.A. market, while wine makes up 13 percent and spirits just one percent of the sector” (Nonalcoholic wines: Emerging innovators and big guns).
It seems important to emphasize that: “while the number of teetotallers has grown slightly, this is essentially a trend of moderation, not abstention. Older age groups are moderating by cutting back on the number of days on which they drink; Millennials and Gen Z are alternating non-alcoholic drinks with alcoholic versions (so-called ‘zebra-striping’) when they socialise” (Alcohol-free wine’s promise needs buyer boost). So, it seems to be accepted that people are drinking “less but better wines”. So, we need the better wines to be lower in alcohol, if we wish to keep the volume up.**
The wine industry has recently been accused (by a number of people) of looking in the mirror — and “driving while looking into your rearview mirror isn’t just dangerous but woefully ineffective” (5 Key metrics to accelerate your wine and spirits sales). For example, the Wine Curmudgeon recently wrote about: BYOB and why it works for restaurants. In Australia, we resolved that issue back when I was at university 40 years ago — how can this still be an issue now? Searching for ways to seed the next generation of wine consumers will require premium low- and no-alcohol wines, instead of arguing about sales points. We have come a long way since the old days: No more than a litre of wine a day, recommends a 1950s French sobriety poster.
Note, finally, that I have not touched on the medical pressure regarding the potentially negative affects of wine. At one realistic extreme, it has recently been noted that there is a very strong move afoot to make drinking every bit as socially unacceptable as smoking (Wine = Cigarettes).
* For those of you who have been part of a couple longer than this, I will pull rank on you, anyway, by pointing out that I also migrated 15,000 km across the planet to live with this woman. Interestingly, our waitress at the Picnic restaurant had migrated from the USA to be with her Swedish husband. So, people do migrate TO Sweden!
** It is worth noting that the USA is reported to have approximately the same number of Baby Boomers (c. 69 million) as it does people in Generation X (c. 65 million), Millennial (c. 72 million), and Generation Z (c. 70 million) (Resident population in the United States in 2022, by generation). This balance matters when planning the future.
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