Non-Alcoholic Wines (Let's Talk About Them)

Ep 33

Are you participating in Dry January?

Or perhaps you simply enjoy non-alcoholic wines?

Whatever the reason, you may be curious about some of the most common questions regarding non-alcoholic wines such as: Are they any good? Are they really alcohol free? Is non-alcoholic wine just grape juice?

Today, we are diving into the complexities of dealcoholized wine and wine alternatives. How are they different? Are they truly 100% alcohol free? Is a wine alternative really wine? 

I’ll also share how the alcohol is removed and what research says about drinking non alcoholic wine if you’re pregnant or living a sober lifestyle?

And of course one of the most important questions you may have is - do they taste good?!

I experimented with 5 non-alcoholic wines and 1 wine alternative and I’m ranking them from my least favorite to my favorite! As well as sharing what I did and did not like about each one.

Whether you're participating in Dry January, pursuing a sober lifestyle, or simply intrigued by non-alcoholic wine, this episode offers valuable insights and recommendations for your non-alcoholic wine exploration.

And I’d love to have you join the conversation over on Instagram! Send me a DM about your favorite non-alcoholic wine or wine alternative!

Additional Resources:

Bevzero Dealcoholization Videos: https://bevzero.com/services/dealcoholization/

2022 Non-Alcoholic Wine Blog Post: https://www.corkandfizz.com/wine-blog/a-definitive-ranking-of-non-alcoholic-wine 

Episode Highlights:

• Dealcoholized wine vs wine alternative
• What is a dealcoholized wine
• Is there still alcohol in dealcoholized wine
• What is a wine alternative
• Are wine alternatives 100% alcohol free
• Is non alcoholic wine really alcohol free
• How much alcohol is in alcohol-free wine
• Difference between non-alcoholic wine and alcohol free wine
• Are non-alcoholic wines safe for pregnancy and sober living
• The history of non-alcoholic wines
• Methods for making dealcoholized wines
• Results from trying 6 non-alcoholic wines and 1 wine alternative 

Transcript

0:08

When you are listening to this, it will be officially January, which means many people in the US and Maybe across the globe. Not sure if this is just an American thing, but many people will be participating in dry January, potentially you included. So I figured what better time to talk about nonalcoholic wines. Of course, there are plenty of other reasons to abstain from alcohol or to choose to drink a nonalcoholic wine. So it doesn't just have to be for dry January. You can listen to this whenever. Now before we get into it, wanna give a quick reminder. If you are not on my mailing list yet, I would love for you to join. When you join, you will get a free shopping guide that has teen of my favorite wines under $15, of course, for those not doing dry January or for when you choose to drink Again, so simply head to corknfizz.com, scroll down to the bottom, and there'll be a little section where you can join the mailing list. I send out a weekly newsletter filled with wine tips and recommendations, special offers, and a lot more. And, of course, be sure to check out my virtual tasting club, The Cork Crew. We get together every month to try new wines and learn from others in the wine world. Head to my website corkinfizz.com/thecourtcrew and use code wine 101 when you sign up to get your 1st month free. Alright. Let's dive into these nonalcoholic wines. Okay. Starting off, I want to start by clarifying the difference between a dealkalized wine and a wine alternative. Both of these tend to fall under the nonalcoholic wine umbrella, But they are different. So starting off, you have dealkalized wine, which is exactly what it sounds like. So first, Wine was made as you normally would. You add yeast to grape juice, fermentation happens, the yeast eats the sugar, produces alcohol and carbon dioxide. Then the alcohol is removed from the wine, and any additional additives, things like carbon dioxide, sugar, and sulfites, are added back in. Wait. Did I say that right? Let me say that again. Sorry, Liz. Then the alcohol is removed from the wine. After that, they will add in any of their additional additives, sometimes carbon dioxide, sugar, and sulfites, to result in your ending nonalcoholic de alcoholized wine. Now the important thing here is to know that there is yet to be a process, though Feel free to correct me if I'm missing something, but all my research has said there is no process to de alcoholize the wine to remove 100% of the alcohol. So most dealkalized wines are reliably less than 0.5% ABV or alcohol by volume. This is essentially the same amount of alcohol that you'd find in a kombucha, And any drink is only classified as alcoholic if it contains more than 1.2% of that ABV alcohol by volume. Now a wine alternative was never a wine in the 1st place. It's a beverage made to replicate the flavor, texture and sensation of wine, but it is made with different ingredients. Common ingredients for wine alternatives include tea, fruit and, like, fruit juice. You can add grapes as well, spices, and then complex ferments. Think similar to kombucha. Wine alternatives are usually, and I say usually, 100% alcohol free except in situations where those complex ferments create a small amount of alcohol. Okay. So that's the difference between a dealkeralized wine and a wine alternative. Now another thing that I wanna talk about is different terminology when it comes to talking about nonalcoholic wines. Unfortunately, there isn't a worldwide regulatory definition for things like alcohol free and nonalcoholic, So you're going to have to check to see where the bottle came from to understand better what is in the wine because the thing is many nonalcoholic wines do contain small amounts of alcohol. As I mentioned, if it's a de alcoholized wine, it can contain up to 0.5% alcohol even if it's called nonalcoholic. So in the US, if you have a bottle of nonalcoholic wine and it was made in the US, It can only say alcohol free if it actually contains no alcohol. If it's something that contains some amount of alcohol but it's less than 0.5% ABV, then it's nonalcoholic or alcohol removed. Now in the EU, that changes, so a lot of your wine's coming from, you know, Italy, Germany, Spain. A wine can be called alcohol free if it has less than 0.5% ABV, and they can actually put on the back label 0.0%. So the reason I'm telling you about this is actually personal experience. I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole Researching when I picked up a bottle of de alcoholized Italian wine at a local nonalcoholic bottle shop here in Seattle. It just opened up recently. Called Cheeky and Dry. Super cute. They've got all kinds of nonalcoholic beverages, I guess I should call them because, you know, there there's Versions of beer and cocktails and, spirits and wine, of course, not alcohol that they contain. And so they had 1. I had done this research, and So far, my research had told me alcohol free equals 0 alcohol, but I'd also done the research that said, dealkalized wine always contains a little bit of alcohol at the end even if it's, like, very trace amounts. So I found this bottle of sparkling dealkalized wine from Italy, but on the back, it said 0.0% ABV, and on the front, it said alcohol free. And I was very, very confused. So luckily, I was able to message the owner of Cheeky and Dry, and she got back right away, her name is Kirsten. She's wonderful. She helped clear it up and explained that, yes, in different countries, so especially in the EU, They can use the term alcohol free if it has less than 0.5% ABV. Now I tell you all this because one of the main questions that I had when I was doing my research is, you know, Is nonalcoholic wine safe for those who are pregnant, or recovering from alcoholism or just want to have a full sober life and not drink alcohol. So basically, the question, if nonalcoholic wines have small amounts of alcohol in them, Are they safe for those people? And the short answer is no. But, of course, please don't take this as, like, the only, option, this is just what I found in my research. There are obviously people who are much more experienced, and you are welcome to do what you wanna do, but this is what I found. Essentially, for those who are pregnant, no amount of alcohol can be deemed safe. So even if it's less than 0.5%, they can't reliably say it's safe. And the main reason for that is they can't actually conduct studies to show that it's safe. Right. It'd be pretty unethical to, try out different levels of alcohol when you're pregnant and see what happens. Most of the data that they do have comes from people who report things after the fact. And I'm not not saying they're lying. I'm more saying, like, it's Hard to remember all of that. Like, what did you have? How much did you have? And so, again, it's just it's really hard to say what level of alcohol is safe, so the best thing is to say none. Also, in a study, this was back in 2010, so it has been a little bit of time and maybe things have changed, but this was a study in 2010. They studied 45 different brands of nonalcoholic, wines, and 13 of them, so nearly a third, had higher alcohol levels than the label stated. And certain brands which claimed to have 0.0% alcohol had levels up to 1.8%, which actually brings us over that, remember, an alcoholic beverage is over 1.2%, so that's 0.6% more than that. So, again, it's a little unreliable and so that's why they say no. In terms of people who are recovering alcoholics or choosing to live a sober life, while it's virtually impossible To get intoxicated on nonalcoholic wines, it can still trigger relief of endorphins AKA those feel good chemicals in your brain. And this could be enough to trigger a desire for more and lead to relapse for those that are recovering. Also, because nonalcoholic wine and beer is made to taste like wine and beer, it can trigger something called euphoric recall. And this causes a recovering alcoholic to exaggerate positive experiences from the past without remembering the negative things that went along with it. So again, I I just share those things. They they were curiosities that I had, and I just thought I'd share what I found, but definitely do your own research and and learn a little bit more if these things, apply to you or somebody that you know. Okay. Now that we've had that little overview, let's dive into the history of nonalcoholic wines because, you know, a big history nerd when it comes to anything wine related. So starting off, the 1st alcohol Free. Now I'm doing air quotes, but you can't see it. But the 1st alcohol free wine alternative skipped fermentation altogether. So, again, this was never a wine in the 1st place, this was back in 18/69. It was a New Jersey dentist and prohibitionist. His name was Thomas Bromrell Welch, which that name might sound familiar. He pasteurized unfermented concord grape juice, and they used it for communion at his Methodist church, and it quickly spread to congregations across the country. And it was soon known as doctor Welch's unfermented wine. Now this was until 18/90 when it just got the name Welch's grape juice because that's all it was. It was just grape juice. But from an ad during that time that was, advertising this Unfermented wine. It said Welch's is the national drink because clear headed efficiency is now the national fashion. So I thought that was very interesting that Welch has actually started as unfermented wine when in fact it was it's just grape juice. It's just grape juice. Okay. So moving forward, I guess, actually, around the same time in 19th century Germany, the Zheng family winemakers were looking to expand the market for their rieslings. They were finding that they were losing clients who began to abstain for health Three sons. So their son, Carl Jung, who not to be confused with the more famous, Carl Jung psychoanalyst or whatnot, he discovered the vacuum distillation method that essentially lowered alcohol's boiling point from 80 degrees Celsius to 35 degrees Celsius. And for all the Americans that don't understand Celsius like me, that dropped it to about 95 degrees Fahrenheit. This allowed them to cook out the alcohol, essentially boil out the alcohol without cooking the wine and introducing those bad flavors. If you remember, I did a podcast episode not that long ago sharing about all the different wine flaws, and one of them is cooked wine. If it gets too hot, It takes on these really, ugh, just, like, jammy, overwhelming flavors, and it just loses its its delicacy, and so by doing this, they did have to get it pretty hot. 95 degrees is still a little concerning for wine, but it wasn't nearly as hot, as at 80 degrees, which I'm just doing the math in my head. I think you multiply by 2 And at 35, it's, like, 1 95 degrees Fahrenheit. So 95 is not bad compared to that. Still a little concerning. But anyway, this did work pretty well, and he actually received a patent for this invention, and now Carl Jung Wines produces dealkalized wines for drinkers in over 25 countries. They might not all still do exactly this method. They might use more of other methods as well, but that's what it started with. Now our last major moment in NA or nonalcoholic wine history came in the 19 eighties in Australia. There was a food chemistry entrepreneur, which I feel like the title must have come, like, after the fact that that he was, like, successful full because, like, I don't know where he would come up with food chemistry entrepreneur. But, anyway, his name was Andrew Craig. He formed a company called FlavorTech to produce his invention, and what his invention did is it extracted essential oils from spices and herbs. It could also recover aroma from instant coffee, And it was later discovered by the ad executive and marketing director Tony Dan that, this Andrew Craig hired that he could control the alcohol content in beverages using this technology. The invention was the spinning cone column, And the way it did all those things is it essentially removed volatile compounds for liquids with a combination Hold on. It removed volatile compounds from liquids with a combination of gentle steam heat and mechanical force. So Dan immediately saw the potential to reduce alcohol. So first, their the first thing they did with this was reduce alcohol. They weren't immediately looking to remove alcohol completely. He figured they could reduce alcohol in wines from warmer climate. So remember, I I talk about this in my wine 101 classes, but Warmer climates result in riper grapes which have more sugar, which means when you do the fermentation process and the yeast eats the sugar, It has more sugar to eat and thus creates more alcohol, so warmer client warmer climates result in higher alcohol wines, and some of these really warm climates could produce wines with very, very high alcohol, and wineries could avoid higher taxes if the wine was under 14%. So that's what Dan figured they could use this invention for. They could drop the alcohol levels to under 14%. This worked out for a little while until 2018 when the tax break went up to 16%. Wineries really didn't need to lower their alcohol call levels anymore. As much as a 2% difference doesn't sound like much, it's a lot harder to get a wine up to 16%, So that is when they switched over to the nonalcoholic market. Now while we're talking about all the ways to whole eyes wine. Let's dig in a little bit to the methods. Now I'm gonna give you my best overview that I can, but this is very scientific. So my recommendation with these, go check out there are some really cool videos on BevZero's website. BevZero is the company that that was founded by, the what's this? It was a company founded by Tony Dan, the Marketing and ad consultant for Andrew Craig who created the spinning cones thing, he created Bev 0. And so they have some videos that show how their technologies work, that I found really fascinating. And I'm more visual than anything, so those really helped me. But I'm gonna teach you so, basically, when you dealkalize wine, from what I can tell, you typically do it in do it in 3 steps. So first, you're gonna pull out the aroma and flavor from the wine, then you're gonna use heat to to remove the alcohol from the remaining flavorless liquid. Finally, you're gonna add that flavor back to the liquid that had the alcohol removed from it. Now the way that they separate separate out the flavor is a little different. And some methods kind of do it in multiple steps while some do it altogether. So one of the popular methods is membrane separation, and the most popular of that is reverse osmosis. Whenever I think of osmosis, did you ever remember, like, as a kid, you'd say, like, I had learned through osmosis by, like, putting my head up against a book? Like, I don't know why that's still what I think of when I think of osmosis, which is it's actually a real scientific thing, but that's what I think. I'm like learning through osmosis. Have a book against my head. Anyway, please tell me other people did that. This reverse osmosis, filter there's a filter that separates and retains wine's tannins, pigments, flavors, and aromatic compounds. It allows water and alcohol molecules to pass through. So again, this is where it's retaining that flavor that can then after they heat up the liquid that doesn't have a flavor anymore, they'll remove the alcohol, and then they'll put the flavor back in. The disadvantage of this technique is that it takes multiple passes as you can only reduce alcohol a max of, like, 6 percent each time. And every time you do that, you do lose some of those volatile aroma compounds. The advantage of this is that you can do it at quite low temperatures. Okay. The other method, which seems to be the most popular method from what I can tell, is called vacuum distillation, And this is what Bev 0 uses, which is one of the leading kind of companies to produce this nonalcoholic wine or at least to, like, provide the technology to produce the nonalcoholic wine. So this one is done at slightly higher temps, but there's technology that combines vast surface area And minimal residence time to avoid heat damage. So there are 2 different technologies or inventions to do vacuum distillation. The first is the spinning cone column, which was created by Andrew Craig that we talked about, the Australian guy in 1980. The spinning cone column is composed of alternating rotating cones that spread the wine out into a thin film, And this allows rapid removal of the alcohol. So the most volatile aroma compounds are extracted from the wine in a quick and gentle first Pass. It does this while so essentially, like, if you think about it moving down, the wine is spread out into these columns as it comes over these upside down cones, And then steam rising upward from the bottom of the column causes these compounds to turn into those volatile aroma compounds to turn into gas, and those are collected and set aside. Then they do a 2nd pass where the alcohol is removed, and I'm guessing that needs a higher temperature to do that, so why they do it 2nd. Finally, you will do the combination step, which is adding back in those aromas that you set aside to the mostly alcohol removed liquid. So that's a spinning cone column. There's also something called packed columns. This consists of 2 or more columns as vertical stainless steel cylinders, which are filled with packing material and provide a huge surface area. This makes distillation very efficient. It's actually a continuous process and extracts the aromas and the dealkalized wine in one single Run. Now when it comes to vacuum distillation, again, the benefits here, you can remove alcohol down to as low as 0.02%. You can also save that alcohol that you're removing out as a byproduct and use it in some other way. As I said before, Go check out those videos on BevZero's website. I think they're super, super helpful. Just do a Google search for BevZero, and you'll find them. I can also add them in the show notes for you. Now one of the biggest questions when it comes to nonalcoholic wine is, how does it taste? Does it taste any good? Like, does it taste like wine? And the thing is it's very hard to predict the flavor in a nonalcoholic wine. So when you remove alcohol, you're essentially I mean, alcohol has flavor. It has weight kinda like the body. It has that burn, and it has sweetness. So when you remove those things from the beverage or when you remove alcohol from the beverage, you're removing those things as well. So removing alcohol can result In a very thin, very, like, light body, it can also change the flavor. Some aromas come through after you remove the alcohol and Some don't. It's hard to predict which ones. This isn't as much of a problem in nonalcoholic beer because beer has such a lower ABV. So when you think about it, wines generally have anywhere between, like, 12 to 15% alcohol by volume. I'm not a beer person, but from the most part, I've seen, like, 5 to 7% for beers and, like, 7% is pushing it, so it's not as much of a flavor difference for beer. Now many winemakers will turn to additives to address this gap. One of the main problems is they can add flavor, they can add sweetness, They can sometimes add body, though they're still working on that, but there's nothing that replaces that burn, which is, you know, the most difficult thing to make it taste like wine. The nice thing about them adding additives, which might sound kind of scary at first, many of these are, like, natural just like carbon dioxide, sugar, things like that. And they're also actually required to list ingredients because this is no longer a alcoholic wine and does not have that exemption that wine does, so they have to list their ingredients on the back. The other thing to keep in mind when you are trying non alcoholic wine is that these are young companies. It is it is new. As much as the history goes back, you know, as far as the 1800, late 1800, I should say, for, you know, finding ways to dealkalize wine. Most of the companies created wine creating wine these days are quite new, So it's really hard to put these beverages up against wine that's been made for centuries. One of the tips that I read, from somebody who owns a nonalcoholic wine shop out not the one in Seattle, but this was a different one. He recommended if you try something you're not a huge fan, Try it again in a year. There's a good chance that these you know, every time he tries a new vintage, as you want to call it, though, it's not quite the same thing because it's not, not quite that, but, every time he tries a New Year's, supply, it changes, and it usually improves. Last thing before I give you the results of my little experiment that I ran of trying 6 nonalcoholic wines, just wanna share how much this trend of nonalcoholic wines is increasing and trending upward. So in 2018, Bev 0 produced less than 20,000 gallons of wine for dealkalization. That was about 1% of total volume that they had. In 2020, that went up to 3%. In 2021, that went up to 8%, and in 2022, it went up to twenty 2%. So over 300,000 gallons of wine in 2022 compared to 20,000 in 2018, and they are now reporting over 20 nonalcoholic brands. So there's definitely a lot more interest in this. Some of this comes from younger having less interest in alcohol or more interest in moderation, I should say, but they haven't really done enough research to say exactly why, there is this higher interest in nonalcoholic wines. Okay. All that said, I thought it would be fun to end this with a little experiment of my own. Part of this was inspired, by finding the, nonalcoholic bottle shop here in Seattle, Cheeky and Dry. I knew I had to try some of the wines that they had, because All of the wines there the owner who used to be a huge wino, before going into sober living, Tastes all of these and only includes the ones that she really, really likes. So we knew we'd have to try them. I also had a few still in my cellar from when I purchased a year or so ago. Don't worry. I checked all of those older wines. We're still plenty within the expiration date on the bottle, and they were stored in a cool Temp seller. So there's no reason that they shouldn't have, that they would go bad just because I had them for a year. But I just wanted to share that just in case it has anything to do with, this because the thing is the 3 that I got from Cheeky and Dry were the 3 at the top of my list. So that either says that Kirsten, who is the, person who found all of them at Cheeky and Dry, really knows her stuff, Or that, and I shouldn't keep nonalcoholic wine for over a year in my cellar, but think it's a combination, if anything. Okay. So I tried 6 wines. There were 2 red wines, 2 sparkling roses, 1 just sparkling white wine, and then 1 white wine. 5 of them 5 of them were dealkalized wine, and one was a wine alternative, and I'll make sure I say which one was which when I talk about it. So in 6th place starting at the bottom, we have studio goodness. We have studio Null Solo Garnacha. This was one of the red wines. The smell was promising. It smelled like wine. I got a little bit of plum and even, like, this, like, Earthy like wet leaves and soil, and then it also had that grape juice smell that I find that most nonalcoholic red wines have because they're mostly grape juice at this point. But then I took a sip, and, the best way I can put this is the flavor was a hell no. My husband also tried it, and he, like, made a face saying, why did you warn me? And I was like, oh, I wanted you I wanted your true reaction. It really just tasted like juice that had Gone bad. It was also, like, oversteeped tea with how tannic it was somehow and just very unpleasant. Again, this was one of the ones that I had in my cellar. Maybe it shouldn't have been kept that long, but the expiration date said August of 2024, and I was tasting this in December of 2023, so who knows? Okay. In 5th place was the giesen, which is spelled g I e s e n. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right, but it was a Riesling from New Zealand. Again, this was a dealkalized wine, so was the last one. And so it's 5th place Mostly out of personal preference, I'm not a huge fan of sweet wines, but if you like a sweeter riesling, I think this would be something for you to try. Aroma wise, I got lime. Also, like, the biggest thing was, like you know, as a kid, I had a lot of those fruit cocktail cups, and I really like to drink the juice out of the bottle of it as a kid. That is what this wine smelled like. It smelled like the fruit cocktail juice, either out of those, like, little plastic cups or, like, the can, and then also very, like, pear, like, pear juice. And so, yeah, this wine, along with smelling like it, also tasted like the juice from a fruit cocktail cup, which young Hailey would have loved. Older adult Hailey doesn't necessarily like that much sweetness. Now in 4th place was the only wine alternative that I tried that evening, and this was the non n o n one Salted raspberry chamomile, which is quite the flavor. In the original so when smelling it, that's the first thing I did with each of these, It was overwhelming raspberry. Like, it was off putting until I realized, like, what it was. Like, that's how overwhelming it was. But then I realized it was, like, Basically, like, I would crush raspberries, like, maybe before you make a sauce or, like, I would always put them on my ice cream, so, like, it just smelled like crushed raspberries. In terms of flavor, there was a tiny oomph of body and a little bit of depth, but it mostly just Tasted like raspberry juice, which isn't bad, but isn't really something I want to drink a lot of, so that was 4th place. 3rd place now. We're getting into the wines that I would recommend for the most part for people, and these were also the 3 that I got at Cheeky and dry if you are local to Seattle. So the first one was Prima Prima Pave Blanc de Blancs. This is a de alcoholized Sparkling white wine from Italy. This is the one that confused me that said alcohol free when actually it probably does have small traces of alcohol. Again, aroma here, any nonalcoholic wine, like, especially the whites, get a lot of pear juice, a lot of fruit cocktail for me. That's what I tend to get. On the flavor, to me, the bubbles were overwhelming. They were just, like, big bubbles. I can't really figure out how to describe it. To be fair, I don't love carbonated drinks, and I'm kind of picky with bubbles in wine. I really prefer kind of the small delicate bubble. This one too I noticed, like, When I got the bubbles, they were overwhelming, and they were also kind of flavorless. Like, it just kind of felt like I had bubbles in my mouth for no reason and there was no flavor going on. But there was no bad aftertaste, so I think if you're okay with carbonation, you would enjoy this. But to me, it just it also lacked, Like, to me, a sparkling wine always has this, like, yeasty bread kind of undertone, and this didn't really have any of that. It was very one noted of just the fruit. Now 2nd place was a red wine surprisingly, and it mostly made it up here because I was surprised by how much I did enjoy it for a red wine, and it was the SOVI, which is s o v I, their red reserve. And I believe I don't have the bottle with me, and I didn't write it down, but I think it was a blend like Tempranillo and Malbec, and obviously, the alcoholized, though. So to me, the smell was great. It reminded me of a California cab, so very, very oaky. It was like vanilla, cherry, chocolate, cedar, and herbs. The taste after having all that great smell was a little disappointing, But, what I need to do is I need to experiment. So when I picked this wine up at Cheeky and Dry, the associate there told me a trick they'd figured out. Many red wines are flat and, like, super light bodied. They're missing the weight that you would expect from a red wine. So to fix that, they've been adding bitters, And you can use nonalcoholic or alcoholic bitters. I mean, alcoholic bitters have such a small amount that, you know, it's barely noticeable, but the bitters just have to have a glycerin in them, which most of them do. Add that to the nonalcoholic red wine, and they said it really ups the body. I meant to try that before recording, but Just didn't have time. So I I can do an update. You know, I'll make sure I do it before this, episode releases so then I can give you an update on my social media over at Cork and fizz and let you know. Also recommend that you try it. Okay. Last but not least, our 1st place nonalcoholic wine of that evening at least was Joyus, j o y u s, sparkling rose. And I even, like I hope I wasn't biased with this. I'm really excited that this was 1st place. This is actually created by it's a female owned brand and also local here to Seattle, so this was really exciting. But they the smell was really lovely. It was, like, fresh strawberries, cranberry, and kiwi. The flavor, I mean, I could just describe as, like, pleasant. There was a hint of sweetness. To me, it had smaller bubbles than the other sparkling that I had, and you get the flavor right away. Like, in the bubbles, like, to me, I need to get that flavor. Otherwise, the bubbles are just like, why are there bubbles in my mouth? So this one was lovely. I would this is my top recommendation, of all the nonalcoholic wines, and, honestly, my favorite, dealkholized as well. I think on A blog post that I did previously, which you can also find on my website, I did a ranking of nonalcoholic wines, mostly ones that you can get at the store, And I included more wine alternatives on that one. And my top 2 on that list were actually wine alternatives. So Says a lot for this joyous sparkling wine that I liked it as a dealkalized wine. If you wanna check out that ranking that I did, I think it was about a year ago now, maybe 2, but a lot of the wines are still available or the nonalcoholic or wine alternatives are still available, and a lot of them can be found at your local grocery store where the ones that I tried For this podcast, we're more a little bit harder to find. You might need to order them online or have a nonalcoholic bottle shop near you to try. Okay. So what are your thoughts on nonalcoholic wine? Would you ever try them? Message me on Instagram at corknfizz or email me, haleyat corknfizz.com to share your thoughts. I'm very curious. If you love this episode as much as I did, I'd so appreciate if you could take a quick second to rate it and leave a review. And if you know a wine lover in your life or somebody who's curious about nonalcoholic wines, please share it with them. Obviously, this channel is primarily about wines that contain alcohol. But if they wanna learn, send this mess or send this episode to them. In next week's episode, I will be chatting with Jane Lopes. Jane is a Nashville based sommelier author and importer. I know her best as the author of one of my other favorite wine books, Stories of Life and Wine in a 100 Bottles. It's great. If you haven't read it yet, go check it out. But since writing the book, she's also created an Australian wine import business with her husband and written a book all about Australian wine. So we're gonna be talking about all of that plus her past and how she got, all the different restaurants that she's worked out. It's gonna be super fun. Thanks again for listening. And as a thank you, I'd like to share that Free shopping guide, 15 wines under $15. Simply head to my website quarkandfizz.com, scroll down to the bottom, and join my mailing list. Cheers.