The current state of world wine consumption, and our responses to it

We continue to be presented with (quite depressing) news articles and web posts about the current state of the world wine industry, with an observed slump in wine consumption (for example: The post-Covid decline of wines and spirits sales is accelerating). So, it seems to be worthwhile to summarize some of it here, as it is not all bad, at least not globally.

In the USA, of course, there is currently a sea of grapes that exists throughout California for the current vintage, but even that may be only short term, as has been recently suggested (Dan Berger’s Wine Chronicles: The glut); and as was discussed 25 years ago by Lewis Perdue (as presented in the Footnote below). Anyway, here I will look outside of that situation.

There is an observed decrease in wine consumption, as I have covered before (Is the global wine slump almost solely due to China?). Well, The International Wine and Spirits Record has presented us with a list of reasons for this decline (Four reasons for the decline in consumption):

• Consumers are increasingly interested in a healthy lifestyle, and are more inclined to socialize without alcohol
• A shift between product categories, and a desire to experiment, especially among Millenials and Gen-Z drinkers (considered to be key demographic groups these days)
• Younger adults generally participate less frequently in wine consumption
• When consumers do drink alcohol, they seek out higher-quality wines (more sophisticated brands and categories), with the emphasis on good value not premiumization (or luxury positioning).

If we take a look at Europe as a specific example (In data: Europe’s wine consumption wanes), then, last year, European Union member states represented 48% of global wine consumption — drinking 107 million hectoliters. This is a decrease of 1.8% compared to 2022, although it is 5% below the 10-year average.

The above graph tells the story. The top three consuming countries are all showing continual declines in recent years (much of it pre-dating the Covid pandemic, which is often cited as a key event). However, the next six countries are all fairly stable. This distinction between the top three and the others is important — the biggest markets dominate the industry, of course, but it is not all gloom and doom.

Sadly, though, this decline is not just in Europe, as last year global wine consumption dropped 2.6% to 221 million hectolitres — the lowest volume recorded since 1996 (see the IWSR reference above). In the USA, wine sales from wholesalers to retail stores, restaurants and bars dropped 8% in the 12 months that ended in August (Wine and spirits struggling in US retail).

The obvious thing to think about, then, is what sorts of responses are possible. One person who has recently offered some suggestions is Lulie Halstead, who founded the research firm Wine Intelligence back in 2002 (Lulie Halstead identifies the opportunities in the beverage alcohol market). Five of her important points include (along with my added comments and links):

• Volume is dropping but value is increasing — a 1% decline in total beverage alcohol consumption in 2023 but a value increase of 3%, with the emphasis on good value, as above (The US wine market faces an unwelcome new normal)
• There is an increase in moderation rather than an increase in abstention; so, people are still drinking wine but just not as much per person (see, for example: Alcohol-free brands urge health minister to update outdated drink labels), and sales of strong wines (ie. fortified wines) have been decreasing for many years (Is there a future for fortified wine?)
  
• Distinctiveness is the key driver of brand growth, not differentiation — the former concerns making the brand easy to identify, while the latter concerns the different features of a product (one example: Alsace wines stripped back to just ’Gewurz’)
  
• Diversity is critical for success — there is a growing desire for refreshing styles, rather than focusing on one product, so that adaptability is the name of the game (as one example: A new dawn beckons for the Médoc’s white wines), including alternative packaging (bag-in-box, cans, tetrapaks, etc) for superior wines (Premium bag-in-box wine — has its time finally come?)
  
• Watch what consumers do in real life — this leads to the conclusion that, for example, there are big opportunities for spritz-style wines, at least in the short term, as well as for cocktails-in-a-can (Maturing RTD category poised for sustained growth).

To finish off, we might look briefly at wine production, since there is no point in this increasing while consumption is decreasing. The above graph tells the story for the European Union. Production in France and Italy is certainly heading in the same direction as their consumption trends.

Obviously, these top three countries are the largest producers in the world. If we look further, then the top 10 wine-producing countries outside of Europe, as a percent of total production in 2023 were (Top 10 wine-producing countries outside of Europe revealed by Audley Travel):

• United States – 9.2%
• Chile – 4.6%
• South Africa – 4.2%
• Australia – 4.1%
• Argentina – 3.7%
• Brazil – 1.50%
• China – 1.30%
• New Zealand – 1.00%
• Georgia – 0.80%
• Mongolia – 0.50%

There really aren't that many large wine producers, globally; so that the perceived problems are actually concentrated in only a few places.

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Footnote: A quarter of a century ago, Lewis Perdue published The Wrath of Grapes: The Coming Wine Industry Shakeout and How to Take Advantage of It (Spike Books / Avon, 1999). He discusses exactly the same sorts of problems that the wine industry is discussing (again) right now. We were reminded of this recently by Mike Veseth (Wine books revisited: Lewis Perdue’s “The Wrath of Grapes”):

The Wrath of Grapes was one of the first books I read when I started studying the wine business. Going back to it now I am impressed with how relevant it remains today and how much it has obviously shaped my thinking about the wine industry.

Although some parts of The Wrath Grapes have naturally aged better than others, the book’s overall argument remains timely and relevant. Most of the big problems that Perdue wanted us to take seriously 25 years ago remain at the top of the agenda. No wonder the book is still in print.

So, what comes around once, comes around again. The book is available on Amazon (here and here).

The world’s most expensive Australian wines?

The world is full of expensive wines, which are often treated as more for investment than for consumption. Each year, Wine Searcher publishes lists of them from certain regions and of certain alcohol types. In this post I thought that I might look at some of the lists over the past decade, from one particular wine-producing region: Australia.

Obviously, these wines do not come anywhere near close to the prices of the top Burgundies or Bordeaux wines, but they do represent top wines of a more affordable class for the rest of us.

Each yearly list of 10 wines covers “The World’s Most Expensive Australian Wines on Wine-Searcher”. [Note: only 9 wines were listed for 2014.] The criteria for inclusion over the years have generally been: “a wine must have been produced over five consecutive vintages and have a minimum of 20 different offers in our search engine.”

The lists available to date are for the years: 2014, 2016, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Obviously, the prices have varied greatly over that decade (as discussed below), but this does not obviate a study of which wines made it into the list for each year. These wines are shown in this next figure, with one row per wine and one column per year (click to enlarge).

There are 25 wines in this list, which indicates a fair turnover between years. Indeed, 10 of the wines appeared in only one year each. Furthermore, only one wine made it into all of the lists: Penfold’s Grange Bin 95 (label above). This is no great surprise, as Penfolds deliberately created this wine, in 1951, to be Australia’s best, and it is usually treated as its most collectable wine (see the history in Wikipedia).

You will also note that all 25 of the wines are red, mostly based on the Shiraz grape (18 of them). Australia does make some very nice white wines, as I can personally attest; but apparently the buyers of expensive wines are not prepared to put their money on them. ** Australia also makes some very nice red wines based on grapes other than Shiraz; but this particular grape certainly makes wines unlike those elsewhere in the world — and this is presumably what the investors in expensive wines are looking for.

Similarly, 16 of the wines are specifically from grapes grown in the Barossa Valley, north-east of Adelaide in South Australia. This was originally Australia’s best-known wine-making region, and so this success is perhaps no great surprise — it is a warm region that makes very powerful wines. However, there are many other regions that make equally good wines, but of a completely different style, notably with more elegance than power. McLaren Vale and Eden Valley are both somewhat near Adelaide, and both appear twice in the list of wines. The Clare Valley, Gippsland, and Heathcote are much further away, and each appears once — the latter two are from the state of Victoria, not South Australia. No wines from the state of New South Wales appear on the lists, which state also has some well-known wine-making regions (eg. the Hunter Valley, with Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Sémillon), nor does Western Australia appear.

As far as the wine prices are concerned, obviously they have increased in each yearly list. The average prices of the 10 [or 9] wines in each year are:

    2014    $397
    2016    $474
    2018    $581*
    2021    $561
    2022    $624
    2023    $644
    2024    $713

That is, Australia's most expensive wine prices increased by an average of 80% over the decade. Not bad for a financial investment.

It remains only to compare the bottle prices to the assessed wine quality scores (out of 100). We do not expect much of a correlation, and we do indeed not find one. The data are shown in the figure above. ***

The three lowest scores do have the lowest prices, but the highest price has a middling score. Otherwise the data form a blob, with a statistical correlation only = 0.216. As we all suspect, the price of investment-grade wine has little to do with the quality as assessed by ordinary wine drinkers.

As a follow-up to this post, I might do a future post comparing all of the Wine Searcher 2024 lists for different regions and wine styles.

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* Minus the Para “port”.

** The label below is from the wine my wife and I had last night with dinner. The 26-year-old wine from the Clare Valley, with its screw cap, has a label that notes: “Red loamy soils over limestone or schist produce wines of great flavour, crisp acid and longevity ... This riesling displays an intense floral bouquet with limey, citrus fruit flavours on the palate and clean crisp finish. It has the pedigree to age gracefully for many years, yet retain its youthful freshness.” All of this was emphatically true. I am so glad that I bought this wine! (It is currently still available in my local liquor store.) The dessert wine to follow was Gramp's 2013 Botrytis Semillon, which was also excellent.

*** The price data have been standardized to allow for the increasing average price across the years.

What’s all this business about lying wine bottles on their side?

There are lots of guidelines regarding the purchase, storage and consumption of wine. Some people see these protocols as rules produced by wine snobs, because most of them don’t apply to beers, spirits or RTDs; and it has been suggested that this is part of the reason why younger people are not interested in wine. Indeed, only some of these guidelines may be so useful, as I will discuss today.

For example, opening an old wine bottle quite some time before you intend drinking its contents really can get the wine to start releasing its inherent aromas — so-called “opening up” (for an example: Wine decanting: give wines some air, or Give that old wine a chance before you tip it down the drain). Similarly, being careful about the sediment in an old bottle of red wine can make your guests be more polite — decanting the wine works, but so does pouring carefully when serving (in both cases, after standing the bottle upright for a while).

However, there is one guideline that may be more questionable. This is the suggestion that wine bottles should be stored lying on their side. Now, obviously this does not apply to the vast majority of the wine produced in the world today, because that wine is drunk not very long after it is purchased (or even stolen, I guess). We are talking here about wine that is being stored for some lengthy time. Also, it does not apply to wines being stored in a plastic bag inside a cardboard box. *

The MasterClass list of the storage guidelines for wine looks like this (7 tips for storing wine at home):

• Store wine at the proper temperature
• Store wine bottles horizontally
• Protect wine from light and vibration
• Store wine at the proper humidity
• Store wine in a wine fridge, not a regular fridge
• Serve wine at the proper temperature
• Store open bottles of wine properly

You don’t see this sort of list for beers, spirits or RTDs! Anyway, we are looking in this blog post at item number two.

Let’s get one thing clear at the start, storing wines for any length of time does definitely have an affect on the wine. A formal review (Bottle aging and storage of wines: a review) notes:

Summarizing collected data, bottle aging and storage of wine is an important albeit complex and sensible process that greatly influences the features of the final product. During storage, deep changes in aroma, color stability, appearance, and mouthfeel take place and define the quality of wine, which, in turn, impacts consumer preference and appreciation.

The question, though, is: which of these things matter the most?

There appears to be only one formal research publication on the topic, from 2008 in Australia (The impact of closure type and storage conditions on the composition, colour and flavour properties of a Riesling and a wooded Chardonnay wine during five years’ storage), and it covers only two wines, both white. It concluded: “The bottle orientation during storage under the conditions of this study had little effect on the composition and sensory properties of the wines examined.”

So, 5 years of data on two wines was not supportive. Similarly, a researcher at a cork manufacturer has claimed: “The cork will never dry out with almost 100% humidity in the headspace, so it is a myth that you need to store a bottle on its side” (Storing wine on its side is nonsense, says scientist). Sadly, many of the commenters on that article disagreed with the author, some citing their experiences with storing wines upright over extensive periods of time — the corks did shrink.

So, one of the most common reasons suggested for lying a wine bottle down is keeping the cork wet. However, not everyone agrees with this, as discussed by Chris Shanahan concerning screwcaps (Cork vs screwcap Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Hunter Semillon 1998):

We drew a decent cork, and as a result enjoyed two amazing but notably different old whites. Most of the group preferred the dazzling, fresh-but-aged screwcap version. But a few favoured the deeper colour and mellow flavours of the cork-sealed wine.

One tasting of two bottles reveals little about the relevant merits of cork and screwcap. A good cork works. But earlier formal trials, and my own experience, show you might need to open several bottles to find a good cork, where every screwcap does the job reliably.

Well, all of this means that most commentary on bottle storage is based on personal anecdotes; but you may like to play it safe and lie the bottles down (Some wine pros say bottles don't need to be stored on their sides. Is that true?). However, most people do not store their wine long enough for the orientation to make the slightest difference (especially if the wine is in a can: In praise of canned wine).

On the other hand, there seems to be little argument that the temperature of storage makes a big difference, as suggested by several formal experiments:

• Wine storage at cellar vs. room conditions: changes in the aroma composition of Riesling wine
• Evidence for damaging effects of heat exposure on wine during transport and storage and recommendations for protection

To me, however, the bottom line is that the average wine lover is not someone with encyclopaedic knowledge. Instead, it is this (7 tips for storing wine at home):

Drinking wine is about people not about wine. Sure, we have lots of information and guidelines about what to do, but without my wife, relatives and friends beside me when I open the bottle, I don't give a hoot about those details. I store my wine in the “correct” manner (lying down in a cool dark place) for the expert-suggested period of time; and I therefore expect the wine to be in good condition when I open the bottle. But I am not thinking about technical details when I open it — I am anticipating how much I am going to enjoy the contents, along with my meal.

All of the details are rightly seen as esoteric, even snobbish, by 99% of wine drinkers.

This important point is all too often missing, as formally suggested by linguist Dariusz Galasinski (A better way to communicate wine):

Talking about wine can mean different things. All too often I kept hearing about residual sugar, tanks, oak, and so on. All could have been done via email. Yes, the technicalities were sometimes accompanied by the producer’s ‘wine philosophy’, but, more often than not, it sounded much better than it was.

But sometimes I heard stories of people engaged in the production. What is it like to collect grapes on the steep slopes of the Mosel? What is it like to see mildew eating up the grapes in Chablis? Or about how the producer’s neighbours helped in the winery and eventually drank the wine. At such tastings, we drank wine made by a real person, from grapes collected by real people, whose cousins, aunts and grandparents were also involved in the hard work. Wine became social and dialogic. Well, wine became ours.

The biggest benefit of wine is that it makes us happy. It was on this basis that I produced last week’s post: Interesting wine quotes from famous people.

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* Remember, in the modern world we are supposed to be minimizing our use of plastics!

Interesting wine quotes from famous people

The most famous quote about wine is probably this Latin one: “In vino veritas.” It is apparently referenced several times in antiquity. Pliny the Elder (23—79 AD) has an early allusion, usually translated as: “In wine, there is truth, and in friendship, there is joy”. Plato (427—348 BC) has an even earlier reference, usually translated as: “There is truth in wine and children.”

As a break from my usual type of blog post, it seems worthwhile to collate here other invaluable wine quotations from over the millennia, ones that are attributed to a specific person, rather than simply to the ubiquitous “Anonymous”. So, here are three dozen of them, with their acknowledged (usually well-known) authors, in time order.

• “Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, make the sage frolic, and the serious smile.” ― Homer (8th century BC)
• “Whenever a man is tired, wine is a great restorer of strength.” ― Homer
• “Where there is no wine there is no love.” ― Euripides (480—406 BC)
  
• “Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man.” ― Plato (427—348 BC)
• “When a man drinks wine at dinner, he begins to be better pleased with himself.” ― Plato
• “Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.” ― Aristophanes (446—386 BC)
• “What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.” — Diogenes (4th century BC)
• “Wine brings to light the hidden secrets of the soul.” ― Horace (65—8 BC)
• “No poem was ever written by a drinker of water.” ― Horace
• “Wine is life.” ― Gaius Petronius Arbiter (27—66 AD)
• “Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath, and a glass of wine.” — Thomas Aquinas (1225—1274)
• “The discovery of a good wine is increasingly better for mankind than the discovery of a new star.” ― Leonardo Da Vinci (1452—1519)
• “Beer is made by men, wine by God.” ― Martin Luther (1483—1546)
• “Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.” ― Francis Bacon (1561—1626)
• “Wine is sunlight, held together by water.” ― Galileo Galilei (1564—1642)
• “The discovery of a wine is of greater moment than the discovery of a constellation. The universe is too full of stars.” ― Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
• “Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.” ― Benjamin Franklin
• “In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.” ― Benjamin Franklin
• “Wine brightens the life and thinking of anyone.” ― Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
• “In nothing have the habits of the palate more decisive influence than in our relish of wines.” — Thomas Jefferson
• “Wine rejoices the heart of man, and joy is the mother of all virtues.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832)
• “Life is too short to drink bad wine.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• “A meal without wine is like a day without sun[shine].” ― Jean Anthelme Brillat−Savarin (1755—1826)
• “In victory, you deserve Champagne. In defeat you need it.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821)
• “Nothing makes the future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte
• “God made water, but man made wine.” ― Victor Hugo (1802—1885)
• “Wine is life. It's the union of the earth with the sun; it’s the essence of time captured in a bottle.” ― Victor Hugo
• “Give me wine to wash me clean of the weather-stains of cares.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
• “I rather like bad wine; one gets so bored with good wine.” ― Benjamin Disraeli (1804—1881)
• “Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine.” ― Karl Marx (1818—1883)
• “A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.” ― Louis Pasteur (1822—1895)
• “Wine can be considered with good reason as the most healthful and hygienic of all beverages.” ― Louis Pasteur
• “Wine is bottled poetry.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson (1850—1894)
• “I will drink milk when cows eat grape.” ― Henri de Toulouse−Lautrec (1864—1901)
• “Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.” ― Alexander Fleming (1881—1955)
• “Men are like wine — some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.” ― Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (Pope John XXIII) (1881—1963)
• “My only regret in life is that I did not drink more wine.” ― Ernest Hemingway (1899—1961)
• “I drink to make other people more interesting.” ― Ernest Hemingway
• “I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food.” ― usually attributed to either W.C. Fields (1880—1946) or Julia Child (1912—2004), neither of whom seems to have actually said it.

There is no single optimum for the amount of alcohol to be consumed by people

I received a (free) book in the mail the other day, which reminded me of my scientific past. I have mentioned in recent posts that I used to teach university students (studying biological science) about experimental design; and in the blog posts I have recently applied this knowledge to experiments concerning alcohol and health (eg. Why alcohol experiments are problematic).

Well, for my scientific research, one of the things I worked on was biological networks. You have all heard about Charles Darwin and the “Tree of Life”, the idea that all organisms are descended from ancestors, with modification. That is, a family tree (of people) becomes a bigger, and older, tree of all organisms, if we go back far enough in time. Well, this is only partly true, because there are all sorts of genetic inter-connections among those branches, so that it is actually a “Network of Life”.

I was one of the early people championing this idea, back 20 years ago. The book that I received is called: The Network of Life: a New View of Evolution, by David P. Mindell (June 2024. Princeton University Press). So, let’s look at this book here, and some ideas it covers related to the effects of alcohol on people. I need to present some background first, and then move on to the alcohol effects.

The network idea is that species share genetic material, via a process called horizontal evolution, so that evolution is actually a web of shared genealogy, instead of just from ancestor to descendant. Species are thus more interconnected than previously thought. Life is not a tree but a network (see the next figure). The complex example of our own history (Homo sapiens) is shown in the network diagram below (taken from Mindell’s book).

To establish my bona fides, at the end of this post I have listed a few of my professional publications related to this topic of evolutionary networks, including the introductory book that I wrote (Introduction to Phylogenetic Networks). My previous blog (2012—2020) was also on this topic: The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks. *

My connection to this new book (and why I got a free copy) is indicated in the Preface: “I am enormously grateful to colleagues who read sections of the full draft of the book. Their insights, patience, and thoughtful commentary improved the book a great deal. This includes Ford Doolittle, Axel Meyer, David Morrison, Greg Gibson, James McInerney, Maureen Kearney, Mary Ellen Hannibal, Peter Alpert, Matt Kane, Jack Sites, Ed Braun, and Dan Graur.” That’s quite a list, but I made it to third! [I read the draft way back in 2022.]

For our main purpose here, in looking at alcohol and people, the author notes that:

“The Network of Life describes the drivers of horizontal evolution — inter–breeding and genetic recombination, the merger of species, horizontal gene transfer, and co–evolution. The network view of evolution that emerges supports a new symbiotic theory of health, which holds that the future health of humans, other species, and our shared environments depends on evolution and adaptations across life’s network.”

As the author points out, the old “Germ Theory of Disease” focuses on human disease itself, whereas the new “Symbiotic Theory of Disease” focuses on human and environmental health. That is, human diseases stem from infection with certain organisms, whereas human health actually stems from the capacity to recover from disease and injury, and to adapt to change over time. So, in the latter the focus is on both short-term and longer-term relationships of other organisms in human and environmental health.

Now, the author mainly restricts himself to the complex network that exists between any given species and the disease–causing organisms that surround and inhabit it. However, I wish to look here at the medical status of humans and their interaction with their environment. Obviously, in this blog, the aspect of the environment under discussion will be the alcohol that the people transfer from their environment into their own bodies.

The basic idea is that there is no static optimum for the nature of the interaction (alcohol in this case) under discussion, because the relationships are evolving in both time and space. The World Health Organization’s declaration (January 2023) that there is “no safe level” of alcohol consumption (that does not affect health) makes little biological sense.

The book’s author notes:

“What do we mean by health? Human health is often taken to be the the mere absence of illness. That view may work on a short time scale. But over longer time frames, health and sickness are not mutually exclusive conditions. Reacting to a flu virus with a fever, aching joints, nausea, and swollen lymph glands, the classic signs of sickness, is a sign of good health, as manifest by a healthy immune system. Sickness and health co–exist, and a long life includes many periods of injury and sickness, followed by recoveries ... Because health and sickness vary over time, there is no narrow or statistically defined normal or abnormal state of these conditions. Environmental health is similarly dynamic. At all levels, health is more about resilience, adaptability to trauma, and persistence over time than it is about absence of sickness.”

So, the idea that there could be a pre-specified amount of alcohol that humans can safely consume, medically, is naive. The amount that we could safely consume at one time in our life will not be the same as at another time. We adapt through time, based on what has already happened to us during our life — we meet our own medical needs over time by being resilient, and adjusting to change. There is no such thing as “normal” — it changes through time for each of us.

Furthermore, our body is a system of interactions among many components (organs, chemicals, micro–organisms). There is much evidence that the microorganisms in our body impact our behaviour. Their chemical compounds can and do stimulate our nervous system and brain, influencing our mood and actions. So, the host behaviour is not controlled by the host’s genes alone. There is no such thing as “normal” — it changes in space, as well.

Just as importantly, the amount of alcohol that we could safely consume thousands of years ago was not the same as now, nor will the amount we consume now be the same as a thousand years in the future. The human species has a long past (there is evidence of Neolithic wine, 8,000 years ago, at the site shown above**), and we will presumably have a long future (although we may change a lot during that time). There is the intriguing idea that our species has evolved while consuming alcohol, and interfering with that consumption might actually have negative effects on us.

For example, we know that reducing some of our previous environmental exposures has correlated with the increasing prevalence of allergies (Why our allergies are getting worse), and reducing exposure to some of our previous microbes may be correlated with the increasing prevalence of auto–immune diseases (The increasing prevalence of autoimmunity and autoimmune diseases). Thus, reducing our exposure to alcohol may actually have negative effects! [So might increasing it, of course.]

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Publications

Morrison, D.A. (2011) Introduction to Phylogenetic Networks. RJR Productions, Sweden. vi+216 pp. ISBN 978-91-980099-0-3. [Formally reviewed here.]

Morrison, D.A. (2005) Networks in phylogenetic analysis: new tools for population biology. International Journal for Parasitology 35: 567-582.

Morrison, D.A. (2010) Using data-display networks for exploratory data analysis in phylogenetic studies. Molecular Biology and Evolution 27: 1044-1057.

Morrison, D.A. (2013) Phylogenetic networks are fundamentally different from other kinds of biological networks. In W.J. Zhang (ed.) Network Biology: Theories, Methods and Applications (Nova Science Publishers, New York) pp. 23-68.

Bapteste, E., van Iersel, L., Janke, A., Kelchner, S., Kelk, S., McInerney, J.O., Morrison, D.A., Nakhleh, L., Steel, M., Stougie, L. and Whitfield J. (2013) Networks: expanding evolutionary thinking. Trends in Genetics 29: 439-441.

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* My networks blog went for 3,187 days (or 8 years 8 months 22 days). So far, this wine blog has gone for 3,036 days (8 years 3 months 22 days). So, I’m getting there. [Tom Wark suggests that the technology for wine blog publishing became “very accessible” around 2009 — his Fermentation blog actually started in November 2004, and moved on to a new platform in January 2022.]

** The Agricultural Revolution started 12,000 years ago, and the Wheel was developed 5,500 years ago.

Why alcohol experiments are problematic

I recently published a post (Has the WHO lost its way regarding alcohol?) pointing out that what is recognized to be the best form of scientific experiment is what is called a “double-blind treatment–control” experiment (or sometimes a “randomized controlled trial”, or RCT). This procedure cannot usually be done ethically on people, and therefore no-one has ever admitted doing it in medical science. So, we will never have the best possible scientific evidence about the effects of alcohol on human health.

This does not mean that we do not have experiments about wine and health. What the scientists do is the best that they ethically can; and some of the pros and cons of this process is what I will discuss in this post. I cover several different but important topics.

What the researchers do is to follow groups of drinkers and non-drinkers through time, and see how these people get on — this is called a “descriptive” study rather than a “manipulative” one (as described above), of which there are several types as listed in the above picture. Here, we are concerned with the first one in the list, “observational”. In this type of study, health and behavior experts measure all of the consistent differences they can find between the studied people, to see what matches their patterns of their drinking and non-drinking. The results of the famous 1926 study by Raymond Pearl are shown in the next graph, as but one early example.

Also, we should ideally do all of this in such a manner that the people involved do not know which of the experimental groups they are in, and nor do the people evaluating their behavior (this is what “double blind” means). Is this actually feasible? Of course not. We can’t force people into the experimental groups, we can only ask them to volunteer to participate. That is, we rely on self–reporting of their alcohol consumption (often via detailed questionnaires filled in by the participants). Let’s look at the consequences of this now.

Here, is one useful recent discussion of how we might justifiably proceed (Causal inference about the effects of interventions from observational studies in medical journals):

Building on the extensive literature on causal inference across diverse disciplines, we suggest a framework for observational studies that aim to provide evidence about the causal effects of interventions based on 6 core questions: what is the causal question; what quantity would, if known, answer the causal question; what is the study design; what causal assumptions are being made; how can the observed data be used to answer the causal question in principle and in practice; and is a causal interpretation of the analyses tenable?

This is all well and good, but the biggest recognized issue is how to choose the studied people. Basically, the choice should be literally random, but this is impossible. As a discussion of the problems with one example of this, we have:

• The Mendelian randomization by Millwood et al.: observations and expressions of concern

In particular, people volunteer to take part in experiments, and this can never be described as “random”. Notably, people’s admissions regarding their own drinking may not be accurate (see also: Wine ratings involve both the accuracy and bias of the raters). This is discussed here:

• Risky drinkers underestimate their own alcohol consumption
• Sources, under-reporting of alcohol consumption

As one specific example discussion (Reweighting UK Biobank corrects for pervasive selection bias due to volunteering):

Volunteers tend to be healthier and of higher socio-economic status than the population from which they were sampled ... Volunteer bias in all associations, as naively estimated in UKB, was substantial — in some cases so severe that unweighted estimates had the opposite sign of the association in the target population. For example, older individuals in UKB reported being in better health, in contrast to evidence from the UK Census.

So, we often end up with this rather jaundiced (but realistic) view:

• All moderate alcohol consumption studies are “all over the charts”

Moving on, another potential approach, to getting around the sampling problems discussed here, is to use animals as a substitute for humans (eg. mice or dogs). This generates a lot of emotional response from parts of the public, which I will not delve into here. Instead, I will focus on the actual experiments.

One useful discussion is (The flaws and human harms of animal experimentation):

Nonhuman animal (“animal”) experimentation is typically defended by arguments that it is reliable, that animals provide sufficiently good models of human biology and diseases to yield relevant information, and that, consequently, its use provides major human health benefits. I demonstrate that a growing body of scientific literature critically assessing the validity of animal experimentation generally (and animal modeling specifically) raises important concerns about its reliability and predictive value for human outcomes and for understanding human physiology ... The resulting evidence suggests that the collective harms and costs to humans from animal experimentation outweigh potential benefits and that resources would be better invested in developing human-based testing methods.

One important point is whether animal experiments actually lead to any benefit for human medical treatments. Sadly, it seems mostly not (Analysis of animal-to-human translation shows that only 5% of animal-tested therapeutic interventions obtain regulatory approval for human applications):

There is an ongoing debate about the value of animal experiments to inform medical practice, yet there are limited data on how well therapies developed in animal studies translate to humans. We aimed to assess 2 measures of translation across various biomedical fields: (1) The proportion of therapies which transition from animal studies to human application, including involved timeframes; and (2) the consistency between animal and human study results ... The overall proportion of therapies progressing from animal studies was 50% to human studies, 40% to RCTs, and 5% to regulatory approval.

I think that you can all see the bottom line here: things are not likely to get any better any time soon, regarding experiments of alcohol intake by humans. The medical scientists are doing the best that they ethically and practically can, in the real world. This, however, does not match what they would be doing in the theoretical world of scientific experiments, which is what would be the best for devising effective medical ideas.

Nevertheless, I am not the only one who has noted that there is: ‘No good evidence’ of risk from low-level alcohol consumption. Basically, the risks of one or two drinks per day are so low that they are very difficult to estimate; and drinking with meals also seems to be unproblematic (Drinking wine with meals linked to better health outcomes). Alternatively, there definitely are risks associated with heavy alcohol consumption, and people with known health problems related to alcohol may not have any safe level of consumption, as well as pregnant women. People with a family history of alcohol abuse also need to be careful.

The no- and low-alcohol conundrum

As I noted last week (Has the WHO lost its way regarding alcohol?), the World Health Organization has mistakenly taken a very negative formal stance with regard to alcohol consumption. I contended in that post that there is little basis for this stance. Nevertheless, many members of the public are taking this very seriously, and “mainstream media is creating a negative narrative about wine with click-bait headlines that can impact government policy as well as popular opinion and consumption for years to come” (Come Over October: creating a positive narrative about wine).

One wine-industry response to this has been the increased development of low-alcohol and no-alcohol wines (sometimes called No-Lo wines). This is thus a topic worth looking at here, because there is little historically acquired expertise for this process (see my earlier post: Low- and no-alcohol wines really do need to be the way of the future).

It is particularly worth noting (Nolo: wine's final frontier) that:

“The rise of no or low-alcohol [Nolo] wines goes hand in hand with the increase of those seeking a healthier life. The benefits of a traditionally alcoholic beverage without alcohol are huge. For those with addiction issues or who are simply taking a break from alcohol, it can psychologically offer the placebo-like adult sophistication of an alcoholic beverage without the associated health risks.”

So, this is an issue that goes way beyond wine, or even alcohol in general, especially for younger generations (eg. Millennials drive no-alcohol gains in the US). Nevertheless, in this blog post I will restrict my comments to the making of the No-Lo wines themselves.

It has been argued (The war on wine) that: “Nonalcoholic wine is ... a gross contradiction in terms — and just kind of gross.” That is, wine contains alcohol by definition, so removing it creates a false terminology. More importantly, removing (or even reducing) the alcohol has a very big effect on the texture and taste of the resulting drink. Jeff Siegel (The war on wine) covers this topic in detail, as does an anonymous commenter (The idea of dealcoholised wine is appalling).

There three current methods (What is dealcoholized wine?): vacuum distillation, reverse osmosis, and spinning cone. The first two require heating the grape juice to almost body temperature, to evaporate the unwanted components (ie. alcohol) — this does, indeed, sound like it would have a pretty serious effect on the wine. The third method is thus the most common, in which the liquid is sent down a vertical series of spinning cones — the spinning motion of the cones separates out the different components, including the alcohol.

What is most interesting, however, for we consumers is what wine-makers are going to do to address this issue, of the changed nature of the resulting NoLo wine. It seems very unlikely that they will do nothing for their product (see: 8 reasons to get excited about the no-alcohol category). However, it has been noted (The challenges of making low/no alcohol wine) that:

“It was striking how different the wines were. Removing even the smallest amount of alcohol affects the flavour; removing a chunk of it fundamentally alters the wine, demonstrating just how much impact alcohol has on wine flavour.”

This, then, is the conundrum. A wine is usually treated as having five components: sweetness, acidity, tannin, alcohol and body. Removing the alcohol actually affects all five of these, not just the fourth one. Something needs to be done to replicate the body, mouth-feel and perceived warmth associated with the equivalent alcoholic wine (The 5 characteristics of non-alcoholic wine).

Given all of this, it should come as no great surprise what the response has been: Why a fine de-alcoholised wine starts with an ‘undrinkable’ base. That is, we already know that, for example, if we intend to age a wine, then we need to start with a wine that is nothing like the intended drinking product: “a young Bordeaux or Barolo, for example, is intended to age and evolve for 20 years or more, and it is simply not going to be delicious after three years, unless you enjoy an astringently tannic mouthful” (How to define a good wine? It’s complicated). [On the weekend, my wife and I had a 2011 Rioja, which was perfect.]

So, it is no wonder that reduced alcohol wines need a pretty different starting point from usual, if they are to be any good at the end. That is: “vacuum distillation does result in the loss of 60% of the wine’s aromas, and 20% of the base product’s volume, and hence the need to exaggerate the aromatic profile before the process begins.” You can read the above article for a specific example (Why a fine de-alcoholised wine starts with an ‘undrinkable’ base).

Given this idea, we can now consider whether anyone has yet created what the wine media might consider acceptable, or even good. As one example, Dave McIntyre at the Washington Post, has  some suggestions: Even with the alcohol removed, these new wines are actually good.

More generally, it has been noted that Germany has been making non-alcoholic wines for more than a century (For the best nonalcoholic wines, look to Germany), and may thus have some pretty good examples of how to proceed.

Even here in Sweden there is progress. For example:

“Oddbird was started in 2013 by family therapist Moa Gürbüzer. After working with families struggling with alcohol-related problems, she saddled up and started Oddbird to create good wines without alcohol.”

I have tried a few of the wines, and they are perfectly acceptable (and are inexpensive).

Has the WHO lost its way regarding alcohol?

As I am sure that most wine-related people have noticed, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recently (since early 2023) taken a very negative formal stance with regard to alcohol consumption (No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health). This is quite a change of tune from its previous writings, which reported some protective associations of low to moderate alcohol consumption.

Other wine commenters have been doubtful about discussing either the science or the medicine behind the WHO (eg. What the debate about wine and health gets wrong; Yes, we are all doomed to die. But wine won’t do us in). Well, my professional background is in biological science, and so I will do so. It seems to me that the WHO’s current official stance is, in at least some ways, absurd. I will discuss this here, focusing specifically on wine as the source of alcohol. It is quite a long post, but please bear with me.

The WHO’s change of tune has actually been coming gradually over the past decade. However, this topic has come to the fore recently, at least partly because the U.S. federal government is currently revising its dietary guidelines (Alcohol policies in U.S. states, 1999–2018), and it has been made quite clear that these are likely to recommend a major reduction in alcohol use (Biden’s alcohol czar warns Americans could soon be told to limit themselves to just two beers per week under strict new booze guidelines). The wine industry has now woken up (The Barbarians are at the gate).

Well it seems to me that the WHO is attacking wine for no good science reason. Having read their documentation (cited above), their principal claim is that there is no acceptable proof of the health safety of any amount of alcohol. Therefore, they conclude that alcohol must be avoided.

This conclusion is arrant nonsense. Even if their premise is correct (no evidence), then their conclusion (avoid) does not necessarily follow. If there is almost no scientific “proof” one way or the other, as far as health is concerned, then given their own claims, the best that the WHO can do is be neutral on the matter.¹

The issue here is that there never could be any evidence that the WHO would find acceptable, because such experiments would be unethical (ie. the manipulation being performed in the experiment would never be allowed). The allegedly best scientific experiment (and experimental design is a subject that I professionally taught to university science students) is what is called a “double-blind treatment–control” experiment (or sometimes a “randomized controlled trial”, or RCT), as shown in the next picture. In this, we take a randomly chosen group of people, and separate them into two groups: those who drink alcohol and those who do not. We then assign half of each group at random to the now-drink-alcohol (“treatment”) group and half to the now-do-not-drink-alcohol (“control”) group. Then we follow the resulting four groups of people through time, and see what medical and psychological benefits and problems arise.

It should be obvious to everyone that this procedure cannot be done ethically, and so no-one has ever done it (even in the name of science!). Even worse, though, we should ideally do all of this in such a manner that the people involved do not know which of the four groups they are in, and nor do the people evaluating their behavior (this is what “double blind” means). Is this feasible? Of course not.

So, we will never have the best possible scientific evidence about the effects of alcohol on human health. The WHO is therefore correct in claiming that scientific evidence is lacking; but they are wrong in reaching any conclusions from this lack. This is certainly not how scientists proceed under these circumstances, anyway.

What the scientists do is the best that they ethically can. In this case, we follow large groups of drinkers and non-drinkers through time, and see how they get on — this is called an “observational” study rather than a “manipulative” one (as described above), of several types as listed in the next picture. In this type of study, health and behavior experts measure all of the consistent differences they can between the people, to see what matches their patterns of drinking and non-drinking. There have been several summary publications in the medical literature reporting on these types of experiments.² This is where all of the positive attitude towards consuming small amounts of alcohol came from, ten years ago.

So, all of the evidence regarding the effects of alcohol comes from experiments of the latter type. This type of rigorous analysis dates back to Raymond Pearl and his 1926 book Alcohol and Longevity (see: Raymond Pearl on alcohol and longevity). If you want to read further, then the World of Wine (by Erik Skovenborg) has several good posts, citing the pertinent literature.

Just as importantly for our purposes here, there is a difference between “hazard” and “risk”, and the WHO does not seem to acknowledge this anywhere in their writings about the alleged effects of alcohol.

For example, for skin cancer there is a difference between the hazard [the sun] and the risk [getting skin cancer]. In this case, we try to control the hazard by addressing the risk. That is, we limit sun exposure to our bare skin as much as we can, and this keeps us as healthy as possible.

To take a behavioral example, getting into a car is unsafe from the first moment we do so. However:

•   we give ourselves control of the car (eg. steering, braking)
•   we make using it as safe as we reasonably can (eg. seat belt, airbag)
•   and then we get on with it (eg. train people to drive safely).

Is there a hazard or a risk warning actually written on any car? No, because it is a societal issue, and we are all expected to know both the hazard and the risk. It seems to me that alcohol is much the same.

The WHO’s failure here tacitly assumes that alcohol is, in itself, the cause of all drinking problems, and that the amount of alcohol consumed determines the extent of any drinking problems (irrespective of the speed of drinking, the purpose of drinking, or the social environment involved). This is further discussed in: Anti-alcohol industry 101: the neo-temperance movement.

Now, this does not mean that we should be complacent about potential health risks.³ After all, Wikipedia shows an increase in per capita deaths recently in several countries, and alcohol is sometimes involved. So, we should all be cognizant of the health risks of consuming alcohol. After all, people should not drink alcohol because they actually believe that it is always healthy for them! (See: Pour one out; and The truth about drinking a glass of wine every day, according to health experts.)

One important recent research publication about the risks is: Alcohol consumption patterns and mortality among older adults with health-related or socioeconomic risk factors (2024 JAMA Network Open 7(8):e2424495). To quote from it:

While no associations were found for low- or moderate-risk drinking patterns vs occasional drinking among individuals without socioeconomic or health-related risk factors, low-risk drinking was associated with higher cancer mortality and moderate-risk drinking with higher all-cause and cancer mortality among those with health-related risk factors; low-risk and moderate-risk drinking patterns were associated with higher mortality from all causes and cancer among those with socioeconomic risk factors ... Wine preference (>80% of alcohol from wine) and drinking with meals showed small protective associations with mortality, especially from cancer, but only in drinkers with socioeconomic or health-related risk factors and was associated with attenuating the excess mortality associated with high-, moderate- and even low-risk drinking.

The work done here looks good, to me, and the authors and funding look “clean” from a conflict standpoint. Importantly, it addresses an apparent paradox, and comes to a fairly clear conclusion. This could turn out to be a key reference paper.

Equally importantly, we need to note that there is more to life than medicine (as shown in the picture above). That is, we need to weigh the relative benefits and risks of all of our health-related activities, together. This point was explicitly made in the editorial of the Lancet medical journal, replying to the WHO’s first publication of its new stance (Alcohol and health: all, none, or somewhere in-between?).

In particular, Robert Joseph has noted: “we need to promote the unique, historic qualities of wine that make it such a great convivial product and such a delicious partner to food.” That is, in the words of Erik Skovenborg, we need to note: Wine as part of a healthy lifestyle; and Drinking with friends: wine’s role as a social lubricant. If the wine label has to list the risks (as is being suggested for the new USA guidelines), should it also list the benefits? (eg. Should alcoholic beverages have cancer warning labels?; or Is wine the ‘2024 cigarette’?)

Even at my advanced age, I still well-remember going down to the pub with my mates on Friday nights (at only 17 years of age!). I was one of the designated drivers, and therefore I drank lemon-squash, but the other guys certainly enjoyed their beers. These people were not just part of my official life (as a school student) but a part of my private life (as a part of society), and our interactions were highly valued in both roles (eg. Couples who drink together live longer, study suggests; and Why social drinking is integral to a longer life). (See also: Rediscovering the fun in wine; and my own post: What are the current causes for optimism in the wine industry?)

In this sense, the new Drinks Insider’s Wine + Health series (by Felicity Carter) provides a podcast that is freely available. The first broadcast tackles: Anti-alcohol groups and drinking guidelines.

In this latter regard, we may well ask how so many temperance groups get to be advisors to the WHO (since 2018) (How neo-prohibitionists came to shape alcohol policy). Their presence (especially Movendi International, a heavily funded umbrella organization for the neo-prohibition movement) is repeatedly noted in commentary on the current WHO attitude towards alcohol, and the bias that it generates seriously concerns me. This also leads to all sorts of accusations against researchers of alcohol effects (see: The fight over moderate drinking: why studies on effects are unlikely to happen).

Let’s face it, we have been making wine for at least the past 6,000 years (Ancient winery found in Armenia), so it cannot be all bad for us, given how much our species has developed during that time. There are not many other creative things we have actual evidence of doing for that long. Surely, we would have dropped it, just like we have done for a lot of other things, if there was a major problem.⁴

However, even if the WHO does succeed with its current campaign (compare Gen Z continues shift away from alcohol with Why today’s reds are higher in alcohol), this does not mean that the wine industry must fade away. After all, we do have methods for reducing the alcohol content of wines, and we can even start to make alcohol-free wines worth tasting (Why alcohol-free wine is in the ascendant) — but that is a subject for another post (see also my previous post: Fruit wine and alcohol-free wines really are also wines).

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¹ For example: Aaron E. Carroll, who teaches at the Indiana University School of Medicine, wrote, in an assessment of alcohol science, that: “15 desserts a day would be bad for you. This could lead to assertions that ‘there’s no safe amount of dessert.’ But it doesn’t mean you should never, ever eat dessert.”

² For example:

• Alcohol dosing and total mortality in men and women: an updated meta-analysis of 34 prospective studies. 2006. Archives of Internal Medicine 166(22):2437-2445.
  
• Association of alcohol consumption with selected cardiovascular disease outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. 2011. British Medical Journal 342:d671.
  
• Alcohol consumption over time and risk of death: a systematic review and meta-analysis. 2014. American Journal of Epidemiology 179(9):1049-1059.
  

³ For example, there is no doubt that heavy alcohol consumption damages your liver. The standard sort of disclaimer is something like this: “There are health risks associated with heavy alcohol consumption; and individuals with known health issues related to alcohol consumption, depression, or a family history of alcohol abuse, may not have any safe level of alcohol consumption.”

⁴ As Esther Mobley wrote: “I know that sugar, in high doses, is awful for me. But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying dessert after dinner a couple of times a week. There’s no question in my mind that the deliciousness of a piece of cake is worth whatever health trade-off I’ve made.”

How many drinks are there in a bottle of wine?

How much wine you drink on any given occasion is a serious issue, not just for your own health, but for the happiness of those around you. Even more seriously, the most dangerous place you can be after a drink or two is behind the wheel of a car — there is a borderline between fun and danger.

For this decision to be practical, you need to be able to estimate how much you have consumed, at least roughly. We have been told that drinkers commonly under-estimate the amount of alcohol they imbibe, thinking that a “standard drink” is of greater volume than it is (ie. people often pour more than 1 standard drink as their usual glass of alcoholic beverages). This is the topic that I will address here.

One issue that we need to get out of the way first is: How much alcohol is too much for a driver? It has been suggested, for example, that the U.S. drunk-driving BAC (blood alcohol concentration) limit is too high. Utah is apparently the only state with a 0.05% BAC limit when driving, and everywhere else in the U.S.A. it is 0.08%.

When I was young, Australia brought in that same 0.08 limit, but later lowered it to 0.05, which is therefore what I find “normal” — one serious drink is all you can safely have. I now live in Sweden, where the limit is 0.02 — you can’t safely drink at all, if you are the designated driver for your outing group. Apparently, there are more than 30 other countries with similar low limits (Drunk driving law by country).

There are a number of web pages that provide data for blood alcohol percentage, for both males and females, based on body weight and the number of standard drinks consumed; for example: BAC facts: impairment starts at the first drink; and Blood alcohol level chart.

So, what is this “standard drink”? Sadly, there is no accepted international definition for how a standard drink is defined in terms of the amount of pure alcohol (ie. ethanol), and so it can potentially vary from country to country. However, according to the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a standard drink is defined as containing 14 grams (0.6 ounces) of pure alcohol, which is a widely accepted version.

Using this definition yields the above graph, showing how the number of standard drinks relates to the alcohol content of the wine, which can vary greatly (wine typically ranges from 9% to 16% alcohol by volume, ABV). That is, the higher the alcohol content then the greater is the number of standard drinks that the bottle contains, and the smaller volume is the size of the standard drink that can be taken from it.

For example, as shown in the graph, there are roughly 5 standard drinks in a bottle of 12% ABV wine, or a standard drink of wine taken from that bottle is 5 fl.oz (150 ml). Alternatively, there are 5.5 glasses in a bottle of 13% wine, and 6 glasses in a 14% wine bottle, and the glass volumes are correspondingly smaller.

Obviously, then, for each bottle of wine we are getting ready to consume (either alone of with others!) we need to check the ABV (always on the label), and then we will know how many “glasses of wine” it contains. This will give us an idea of what situation we are now in.

When we are judging this in real life, however, the shape of the wine glass and its volume can affect our judgement. This is illustrated in the next picture, which shows what a 5 fl.oz pour looks like in five different glasses. Note that wider glasses typically receive inordinately larger pours. It has even been reported that the amount of wine poured can be affected by whether the glass is held in the hand or stands on a table, and whether the wine is white versus red (whites typically get bigger pours); and, of course, it is reported that: Risky drinkers underestimate their own alcohol consumption.

Returning to the initial topic, we also need to consider: How quickly does the alcohol disappear from the body and can you sober up faster? Apparently, the liver breaks down alcohol into other substances at a rate of about one drink per hour, although there are big differences between individuals. Sadly, alcohol and its byproducts can continue to be detected in your system, so that you could fail a breath test several hours later.

The current dietary guidelines for healthy alcohol consumption by adults in the United States differ between sexes:
 — women should consume no more than 1 standard drink per day and a maximum of 7 drinks per week
 — men should consume no more than 2 standard drinks per day and a maximum of 14 drinks per week.

In comparison, in Australia and New Zealand the guidelines are that:
 — a woman should have no more than 2 standard drinks daily, no more than 10 per week, and no more than 4 at once
 — a man should have no more than 3 standard drinks daily, no more than 15 per week, and no more than 5 at once.

It is for these reasons, as well as simply general health concerns, that sales of low- and no-alcohol wines have been growing briskly in recent years, as wine drinkers now pay more attention to what goes into their bodies (Why major players are investing big in wine with little, no alcohol).

The latter is a tricky business. There are two main ways to produce lower-alcohol wines — harvest grapes at lower sugar levels, and remove the alcohol after fermentation. This is a topic for another post.