Sober Curious, Mindful & Alcohol-Free Drinkers Podcast: Low No Drinker

#95. Alcohol-Free Wine vs AF Beer: It's Not a Fair Fight

• Denise Hamilton-Mace • Episode 95

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This week, I'm diving into the thorny topic of alcohol-free wine and why we need to stop whining about it.

Whilst I'm not claiming it's perfect yet, the constant negativity isn't helping anyone.

I explore why alcohol-free wine faces unique challenges compared to the meteoric rise of AF beer, from centuries of tradition to higher production costs, and why these passionate producers deserve our support rather than our scorn.

It's time to approach alcohol-free wine with curiosity instead of cruelty, give it the same trial-and-error approach we gave full-strength wines, and help shape its future through constructive feedback rather than writing off an entire category.

0:00 Stop Whining About Alcohol-Free Wine
1:52 The wine/beer comparison problem
4:22 Upcoming wine mini-series
6:35 Industry efforts
8:21 Technological costs
10:13 Our responsibility as drinkers
16:12 Communicate with the makers

Best episode to listen to next:
#94. Lifted: The UK's First High Protein Alcohol-Free Beer
#53 Creating a household legacy with NoughtyAF wines & Amanda Thomson

If you could spare me two minutes to rate and review the show on your podcasting app of choice, you'll make me the happiest little podcaster in all of Low No Nation 😊

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Speaker 1:

okay, let's talk about alcohol-free wine. We need to. We need to talk about it. Alcohol-free wine, non-alcoholic wine, light wine, whatever you want to call it we need to talk about it and we need to talk about why. We need to stop whining about it. Yes, I know, I know alcohol-free wine isn't quite there yet. I am not claiming that it is a flawless match for full strength wine I don't think anybody is but the constant negativity around it isn't helping. So today, let's talk about why alcohol-free wine might not quite be where we want it to be and how we should be approaching it instead.

Speaker 1:

Hello, hello and welcome to the Low no Drinker podcast, the only twice weekly podcast helping you find, understand and enjoy the world of low no and light alcohol drinks, drinkers and drinking. My name, as you'll know by now, is Denise Hamilton-Mace and I am the founder, editor and host of all things Low no Drinker. Okay, let's start with a very, very, very brief history of wine production, because I think that that's an important basis for this conversation and where it needs to go. So wine production has followed the same basic formula for centuries. It is grapes plus yeast plus time equals wine. Now, before I get too many angry emails. Yes, I'm well aware there are far more nuances involved, like grape varieties and terroir, and skin contact and barrels, but in very, very basic terms, that is the core process that wine production has followed for centuries and it doesn't really change. One of the things that you'll often hear, or that I often hear, when it comes to people talking about whether or not wine has made it yet, is the comparison to alcohol-free beer. Okay, so let's contrast the beer production with the wine production, because beer production has also followed the same basic process for centuries, which, for beer, is grains plus water plus hops plus yeast. But the big difference is that beer brewers have always been far more experimental with flavors, with adjuncts, with fruits, with other ingredients than wine producers have.

Speaker 1:

Wine has stayed pretty much the same and beer has dived into a world of creativity that has led to some fantastic productions, including including a range of beers by northern monk, uh, which are were made in partnership with aunt bessie. For those of you outside of the uk, aunt bessie makes uh yorkshire puddings here in the uk which we have with our roast dinners, and they made a range of roast dinner beers. I kid you not, they have a roast dinner brown ale, and then three dessert beers, which is an apple crumble and custard pale ale, a jam roly poly and custard pale ale, and a sticky toffee pudding and custard porter. Okay, now I would stake money on the fact that I don't think that there's a wine producer out there who's done something similar with wines. If I am wrong, please let me know. Send me an email deniselonodrinkermagazinecom. I would love to hear about it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, but my point is that beer producers or brewers have always experimented with their beers, whereas wine producers haven't. Now beer has also got a much lower alcohol content than wine. So your average full strength beer is around about 4 to 5 percent ABV. Against wine, that's around about 11 to 12 percent ABV, and that number is growing. As climate change impacts grape growing and grapes are getting sweeter, the alcohol content of wine is increasing and many more wines are now averaging your 13 or 14 percent. Beer has also and this is really important beer has also been at it for a lot longer. The first low and no beers were brewed centuries ago, whereas vacuum distillation, which is the sort of inaugural method for removing alcohol from wine, was only invented in the early 1900s. So the comparisons between the two are just not particularly fair.

Speaker 1:

While I remember speaking of production methods, I am actually working on a mini -series about alcohol-free wines with a wonderful chap. He's a sommelier and an alcohol-free wine distributor based in Canada, but he has a distribution business there and here in the UK and he goes into venues and trains teams, hospitality venues and trains bar staff and waiters and such about alcohol-free wines and we are working on putting together a great little mini-series for you that's going to cover all of this stuff, such as how it's made, how to taste it, where to find it and so on and so forth. So I highly suggest that, if you aren't following the podcast yet, that you hit that follow or subscribe button to make sure that you don't miss it. Ok, but back to what I was saying. The production methods for making alcohol free wine are a lot newer and it's also a much bigger task.

Speaker 1:

Taking away 12 to 14 percent of the drink's volume of a wine wine's volume means that what you're left with is exposed. It's got nowhere to hide, it's just there in its purest form and it's feeling vulnerable and that's not a nice place for anyone to be. The alcohol that you take out of wine or don't put into wine, depending on how it's being being made, has lots of important jobs to do other than just getting you drunk. I've mentioned this in episodes before, but alcohol does so much in a drink. It builds and carries flavour and aroma. It adds texture and body. It preserves the liquid. So, particularly for something like a spirit or a wine where the longer it can sit on the leaves, the longer it can sit in a barrel, the longer it can age, the more potent and deeper those flavors are going to be Wine, when alcohol is taken away, it doesn't have anywhere else to hide.

Speaker 1:

It's not like a spirit, and although alcohol-free spirits have a higher abv, they have mixes to to add back into their flavor. But wine doesn't have botanicals to beef it up. It doesn't have those mixes to help it out. So it does produce a vastly different liquid and a vastly different drinking experience than its full strength counterparts. Is that experience always good? No, of course it's not. You'll know by now, if you've listened to any of my episodes before, that I'm not here to pretend that the entire low-no industry is absolutely perfect and that everything's amazing. Some of it's crap, but that's just life, okay. Some of it's also really really bloody amazing, and this is why I think it's important to Give a little props to the low-no wine market, because these winemakers, these producers, are doing really hard work in a space that isn't easy.

Speaker 1:

Alcohol-free wine producers are up against centuries and centuries of tradition. They're up against consumers with very discerning palates with very discerning palates read snobby and endless regulations. You know the wine industry has not been as welcoming to the production of alcohol-free varietals as, for example, the beer or the spirits industry. You know I've spoken to producers on this podcast and it's interesting. Sometimes some of the biggest challenges that they face are around getting their previous colleagues. So they've come from a full alcohol wine industry and decided to move into alcohol free wine and one of their biggest challenges has been getting their previous colleagues to stop laughing at them because they just don't believe that it can be done. And I mean, when you're up against that kind of negativity, making something that's palatable and enjoyable is an even bigger achievement. The other thing to bear in mind is that because the technology to produce alcohol free wines is still so new, it's still really expensive.

Speaker 1:

There are three main ways of making alcohol free wine and, as I said, I will cover these in other episodes, but the most common that you'll hear of is de-alcoholization. But de-alcoholization requires firstly producing a full alcohol wine. So you spent the money that any other winemaker would spend to produce a full alcohol wine maker would spend to produce a full alcohol wine. You're then going to take it through another process to remove that alcohol, and to do that in a way that doesn't damage the remaining liquid is going to cost a lot of money. Another production method for alcohol-free wine is known as arrested fermentation, which means either stopping the fermentation process before it produces too much alcohol or using specifically produced a modified yeast that can't produce as much alcohol. So again, that is quite a high cost. And the other way of making it is without fermentation at all, but that means lots of macerations and blends and producing combinations of other liquids that you can then build together to make a wine style drink. I'm sure you can appreciate that all of these are really costly procedures and they all take a lot of time and a lot of money.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of research and development that goes into new product development for alcohol-free wines and because alcohol-free wine producers haven't been at it quite as long as the alcohol-free beer guys, they haven't quite got there yet, but that's okay, right, because it's like we tell our kids just because you haven't got there yet, just because you're not good at something yet, doesn't mean that you stop trying. It means you try and try and try again, and that costs time and money. So it's important for us, as the consumer, as the drinker, to start being more curious about these wines, rather than cruel. We need to buy these products and, yes, spend actual money. We need to taste them properly, we need to pair them with food, we need to give them the same time and attention that we do full strength wines and offer constructive feedback to producers. Um, I've told this story before, so if you if you've heard it before, then do bear with me, but I think it's a really good one for for the new listeners that I've been getting and, by the way, hello to all the new listeners that have joined me recently. So happy to have you here.

Speaker 1:

But I was speaking at an event a while ago and a lady approached me afterwards and said that she had struggled to find alcohol-free wine and she just didn't know whether she should just start drinking something else. And so I said to her okay, do you have a favorite full-strength wine, you know, like a Malbec or a Sancerre or a Servignon Blanc. And she gave me an answer. I think she said Servignon Bl. I asked her. I said okay, how many different wines have you tried before landing on that one as your favorite? And the answer, of course, is loads. We all know that. You know you, you'll try tens and tens or hundreds and hundreds of wines in your time before settling on the ones that you know are your go-to. That's okay, that's absolutely fine.

Speaker 1:

And in that journey of trying all those different wines, how many awful ones did you try? We've all had those awful full-strength wines that taste like vinegar, or they're really acidic or stringent, or they've got that weird smell or they've got no flavor to them at all. That you got them from the corner shop or 7-Eleven, I guess, if you're in the States, or certain restaurant types that just don't produce good wine. You know, I don't know why I kept trying to find a decent red wine to have at a curry restaurant. It just doesn't happen. But you know what happened. Did we try those wines and go, oh, these are disgusting. I'm never drinking wine, ever again. Or is it more likely that you know you pinch your nose, throw your head back, throw the wine down your gullet, head to the bar and order something different instead.

Speaker 1:

And that's what we need to do with the alcohol-free wine space as well. We need to give it that same opportunity. We need to be prepared to trial and error just like the producers are trialing and erroring their production methods to go and taste these different drinks and find the ones that we like. And here's what's really important Okay, when you're finding wines that you think could be something that you could enjoy, but it's not quite right communicate with the producers and tell them what you think.

Speaker 1:

In my episode with Tony Robinson, the founder behind Lifted Brewing now, lifted, granted, is a beer. It's a protein lager rather than a wine. But what I really liked about talking to him is that he said that they often speak to their customers and ask them what's wrong with the beers. You know they find out. What do you like about it? What don't you like about it? What would you like to see in future? What's missing? What can I do to make this better? Because he knows that unless he gets the feedback from his drinkers, he's not going to be able to produce the beer that they want to have, and the wine producers that I've spoken to on this podcast and at events have all said the same thing as well. They want your feedback, they want your critiques, they want your constructive criticisms, not just this tastes like crap, but actually this is too sweet for me, or I'm not getting enough of this scent from it, or I'd like to have a bit more of that body. You know, whatever it is, and you'll find that these producers are really open to hearing that feedback.

Speaker 1:

Okay, in terms of what you're finding and what you're drinking when you're shopping in your local supermarket although, as you know, I always say finding online retailers is the best place to find and experiment with lots of new and exciting beverages more than you'll find in your local supermarket Head to places like Wise Bartender and Dry Drinker and try wines from there from all over the world. You're bound to find things that you like. But the most important thing I think you can do when you have that glass in your hand is to not compare it to your favourite full strength wines, is not to compare it to the wine you had down the pub the other day, because it's a different drink and it's not going to be the same, and that's okay. Instead of comparing it, what you need to do is ask yourself a few questions. Do I like the taste of this drink, never mind all the things that you should be expecting from it? Do I like the way that this drink in my glass right now tastes? Does it feel good? Does it smell nice Whilst I'm drinking it? Do I feel like I'm enjoying an adult beverage in an adult environment? Is this something that I could enjoy with a meal? Is this something that I could happily share a bottle with a friend? And if you find a yes in those questions, then that's a win. Fantastic, you've got a great wine time drink that you can enjoy. If the answer is no, then fair enough. Don't drink that one again, but also don't write off the entire category. Go and try something else If we want our producers to keep working on making better wines and they are.

Speaker 1:

You know, these are really impassioned people that want to solve for the same problems that you're facing, because most of the producers that I speak to are solving for a problem that they themselves had. You know, they all say to me I couldn't find a decent alcohol free wine, so I decided to make one, and you know you've got to say hats off to somebody for doing that. Seeing a problem that you're facing and working your butt off to find a solution that works for you and for everybody else is no mean feat and and that alone deserves a round of applause. But if we want them to keep getting better, then we need to invest in what they're doing by buying a bottle, buying a glass, not just asking for freebies. We need to communicate what they're doing well, we need to encourage them with some positive feedback, and we need to encourage them with some positive feedback and we need to help them with constructive feedback as to what it is that we expect to have from these drinks and what it is that we want them to do better.

Speaker 1:

And you can do that. That's not hard to do. Social media makes it so easy for you to reach out to people and because most of these producers are small, independent producers, what I found is that if you DM somebody on social media and say I really like your wine, but blah, blah, blah, you're likely to get a response from the founder or, if not, somebody high up in their team, because most of these teams are like two, three, four people working together to produce something and they are doing everything you know. They're developing the recipes, they're marketing the products, they're doing the social media and they're answering the emails. So you can get hold of producers and have real conversations with them about what it is that they're they're doing.

Speaker 1:

I hope that this episode has helped you to recognize that alcohol-free wine no, no, it's not where we want it to be right now, but it is on the way, it is trying and it is working really hard and, just like we say to our kids, you know, you've got to keep trying, you've got to keep working at something. The only way to get better at it is to keep doing it. So I hope that this has helped you to recognize that we are heading in the right direction with alcohol-free wine. I personally do think that we will get there. They are improving every day. Every time I try wines, they get better and better, but it's going to take a little bit more time before everybody can find a favorite that they can have as their go-to, but that's okay. Beer got there, spirits are working on it and wine on it too, and I think that's absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 1:

Don't forget if you are would like more content like this more uh, information about alcohol-free wines. Make sure you hit subscribe or follow, or whatever the button says on whichever app that you use, to hear my voice right now, because I am working on this mini series and it is going to be fantastic deep dive into the world of alcohol free wines, how they're produced, how to enjoy them, how to pair them with foods all those things that I get asked about on a regular basis. And, in that vein, if you do have questions that you would like answered, if there's a subject that you want me to dive into, if there's an expert you want me to get on a podcast, then let me know, because I want to make sure, just like those wine producers, that I am producing the content that helps you to live your life less intoxicated. So do that.

Speaker 1:

You can drop me an email, denise at lonodrinkermagazinecom, or DM me on social media. You'll find me mostly on LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm too old for TikTok. I've tried it, it just doesn't work for me, but, yeah, you can find me in those other places. That's it for this week. Thank you very much for being with me Until next week. Cheers to a life less intoxicated.

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Denise Hamilton-Mace

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