EP 7 | Alc Free TRANSCRIPT
 
 

If you ask wine lovers about their experience with low alcohol or non-alcohol wines, you're likely to get a lot of mixed reviews. And the majority of them might never have even tried them. But of those who have, they might have done so a couple of years ago and haven't gone back since. but why is this? Is there a root cause or a common thread?

I mean, let's be candid with ourselves. When a beverage or a food that we're used to or we love has had something removed, is it the same? Have you ever had that low fat chocolate chip cookie that was simply as ooey and gooey and delicious as the real thing? Or a sugar-free soft drink that tasted exactly like the original? Probably not.

So on today's episode, we are going to put non-alcoholic wines to the test to see how they stand up on quality, taste, and your overall wine experience. So you're going to be armed with all the information you need to explore the when, the how, the why. few of these non-alcoholic wines into your own rotation.

I hadn't given non-alcoholic wines a lot of thought until recently when one of my friends who works at the wine shop down the hill told me she was expecting a baby. And because she loves her sparkling wines, the wine shop owner had added a few to their selection so she could continue to enjoy a glass of bubbles during her pregnancy. Now, of course, I couldn't resist grabbing a bottle and bringing home to serve my friends who were coming over for a weekend brunch.

So when my college besties came over for girl's brunch, we popped the cork and found it was citrusy, it was bright, it was fresh, and it was kind of fun. But the best part was we could enjoy this celebratory drink together without having to worry about how we felt the rest of the day. So bottom line, I would actually buy that wine again. But as with any wine, not all alcoholic wines are created equal. Let's deep dive.

Let's explore. I am going to start off with a question I get asked all the time. the most common complaints about non-alcoholic wines? where do they stand as far as flavor and texture or complexity? Are they simply trying too hard to be just like the traditional wines? 

And if you're listening to this podcast, I'm going to assume that you at least like wine, if not, love wine, so it's also safe to assume that when you go to your local grocery store or wine shop, you're probably going to skip right over the non-alcoholic section without ever considering stopping and exploring. Because you might have that perspective that if you have a non-alcoholic wine, you're going to have to sacrifice flavor. You, as well as many other wine lovers, may not have ever even considered non-alcoholic wine as a real wine.

If you haven't tried this category, you've likely heard some complaints from people who have that it's just not the same. So what are the common perceptions about non-alcoholic wine? First, the flavor profile does not fully duplicate real wine. Isn't it fair to assume that the process for removing the alcohol is going to significantly impact the taste, the aromas, or if they're going to feel less complex, they're just not going to feel the same way that a traditional wine does. I mean, the body, the aromatics, the balance of the wine all come from alcohol, right? 

Secondly, that non-alcoholic versions of wine can have significant sugar content. And that's actually true because to enhance the taste of some of these non-alcoholic wines, they can actually have a lot of added sugar this can actually be a real concern. 

Third, removing alcohol changes the body, the mouthfeel of the wine. And winemakers will put in all these weird added ingredients and additives to try to re-mimic. Again, it's true, non-alcoholic wines can try to mimic the mouthfeel of traditional alcoholic wines by adding things like glycerin or certain flavorings, which can cause sensitivities for some people. And finally, non-alcoholic wines can trigger things like histamine sensitivities. 

And let's get real, all wines are made from grapes. Well, there are some fruit wines, but traditional wines are made from grapes. Grapes have histamines. They grow outdoors and people can have extensive sensitivities. They can get headaches, nasal congestion, a lot of allergy-like symptoms from histamines. But it doesn't matter whether you're drinking a non-alcoholic version or a traditional version of wine. If you're sensitive to histamine, this will be a trigger. 

And it's completely understandable to have these perspectives this is a fairly new category of winemaking. And like many new things, it takes a while to get the quality and the experience that you're aiming for. But rather than just ignoring this segment of wine, we're going to take time to define what these wines truly are and how they get de-alcoholized or how they are zero alcohol. 

And then we're going to share a few ways that you might actually want these wines to play a role in your own wine journey. So when it comes to making de-alcoholized wines or non-alcohol wines, there are two distinct processes. And believe it or not, the first one we're going to talk about starts with traditional fermented alcohol-filled wine, just like what's in your glass right now. Of course, we're taking a liberty in assuming that you're drinking wine while listening to this podcast.

So in the alcohol removed or de-alcoholized segment, the wine all starts with alcohol the same way as a traditional stilled wine. It goes through fermentation. So the sugars plus the yeast equal the alcohol. 

But there are three methods that are used the fermentation. I'm going to caveat this with the the resulting wine is typically going to still have about a half a of alcohol going to do my best not get too geeky and not get too technical as I describe these processes. So stick with me on this. And I have added some great videos in the show notes, which can help you visualize these processes, which for me is super helpful. 

Now, the first one is vacuum distillation, which is kind of the most popular process used. And what this process does is it takes your still wines, it takes the the alcohol based wines and puts them into a big vessel and the pressure is then removed out of this vessel. And what does that do for it? Well, alcohol or wine will boil at a temperature of about 170 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Now, if you are going to boil wine at that level, first of all you will get rid of the alcohol, which is part of the process. But what you're also going to do at that high of a temperature is you are going to create some sour or bitter or really unpleasant flavors in the resulting wine due to that heat. 

So when you put this into a depressurized vessel, you can actually bring that boiling point down to somewhere between 70 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit, which is right in line with the wine ferments at to begin with. So you are going to be able to have significant control as a winemaker. It's a very gentle process and it leaves the flavors and aromas of the remaining wine their original.

And then the alcohol that is vaporized off of the wine condenses in a separate vessel and then is cooled and can be used for all kinds of different things that we'll talk about later. The second process is called spinning cone. And this is a subset of the vacuum distillation process that I just talked about. You have a vacuum sealed, depressurized vessel, but within this vessel is a vertical series of all these cones as the cones spin around, they produce centrifugal force. 

Think about your favorite amusement park and that ride where you get in, you stand against the walls and it starts spinning and spinning and spinning, and then the floor drops out, but you stick against the walls, that's centrifugal force. So the centrifugal force forces the wine into these thin layers over the surface of each of the and the alcohol starts to evaporate off of it but also these flavors and aromas concentrate and are separated off through this high spinning process. 

Because they separated at the end of the process you have the alcohol in one vessel and you have the remaining compounds for the flavors and aromas that get blended right back into the original liquid once the wine has been de-alcoholized. So all of that concentrate is just mixed back into the remaining liquid, which is mostly water. But you do lose in both of these processes a significant percentage of the wine.

If you're removing the alcohol and it's a wine that starts at 13%, you're going to lose somewhere between 13 and even 20 % of the total liquid. So winemakers have to put additional liquid, most likely an unfermented grape juice back into to the resulting amount of liquid that you started think of it kind of like champagne process when we disgorge that puck you do lose some then we put back in a liqueur d'expedition to bring that bottle right back up to the volume that it had to begin with 750 milliliters. 

So again these processes are both in the show notes in video form and I highly recommend taking a few seconds to watch them. The last process we're going to talk about to de-alcoholize wine is called reverse osmosis. Now this is a series of high filtration. So you've got these super, super, super duty filters and the wine is just pushed back through time and time and time again. 

All of the flavors and all of the aroma compounds get stuck to these filters. And on the other side of that, you end up with the water and the alcohol and that liquid is then boiled. The alcohol, of course, evaporates off of it and you just have water remaining. And then the compounds are all added back into the remaining liquid the key thing here is that because you are highly filtering when you add the compounds back in there are some of the flavors some of the aromas that are going to get lost in translation. 

But this can actually be good for the winemaker if they want to manipulate the final flavor of the wine by keeping some of those compounds still separated. But it is high energy process and a very expensive process. And again, you do lose a little bit of the flavor or aroma nuance because of that high level of filtration. 

So these are the top three methods for removing alcohol from a traditional bottle of wine. So again, it started just like the wine in your refrigerator today. But the remaining alcohol is still there. Now, while it is about half a percent, let's translate into what that looks like in a traditional wine. 

So let's take a single glass of traditional has about 13 alcohol. If you want to have an equivalent amount of de-alcoholized wine, to that one glass, you're going to need to drink about 15 bottles of alcohol removed wine to create the same amount of alcohol in your single glass. Now, many of the foods in our kitchens today, right there on our counter or in our refrigerator, have about the same amount of alcohol as these alcohol removed wines. 

So things like your fruits and fruit juices, especially things like ripe bananas or kombucha, yogurt, kefir, your vinegars, your mustards, even your soy sauce. But what I found most interesting is that that hamburger bun you're going to use in your barbecue this weekend has the same amount, if not more alcohol than a bottle of non-alcohol or de-alcoholized wine. So it's not surprising that when we go through any of the three processes we've talked about, there is going to be a small residual of alcohol remaining.

Through these processes, an additional question is why are these non-alcoholized wines expensive than their alcohol-based cousins? I mean, they don't even have alcohol in them. So why would they be more expensive? And while there are some that are around $10, of them are going to be a little higher price than traditional wines. mostly following somewhere below $30. 

But here's some reasons why. 

First of all, all of the processes we just talked about are expensive. You've got equipment. That's expensive. The energy consumption extract the alcohol itself is expensive. 

I've talked about the fact that less liquid remains after the alcohol is removed. So if you start off with 100 liters and you go through the de-alcoholization, you're probably going to have 80 liters remaining. So you have to make up that other 15 to 20 percent somehow. Or you have fewer bottles to sell at the end of the day after the processes. 

And some of these alcohols that are extracted off can go into things like gins or spirits, vodkas or biofuels. But the revenue from that is definitely not going to completely compensate for that loss of about 20 percent.

Now wines go through that process that are still called non-alcoholic wines made in a completely different way. The ones that have never had alcohol to begin if 0.5 % alcohol is still more alcohol than you'd like, there are true zero alcohol options. But unlike their alcohol they've never gone through fermentation. So they've simply never had alcohol in them to begin with.

Now these are sometimes called proxy wines or wine adjacent beverages. a lot of them will use grapes or grape juice as the base, but then they use all these additional alternative ingredients to and aromas that mimic or are wine like. But again, they don't go through fermentation so they can start and finish as 0 % alcohol or 0 % ABV.

And they get these sensibilities, these wine-like flavors from things like teas and spices or fruit flavors, bitters. In other words, they're created from a lot of different natural or botanical inputs, everything except alcohol. And because they were never fermented, zero, zero, zero alcohol at the end of the day. 

So why is there such a growing interest in non-alcoholic wines. And why does this matter to you? Why does this matter to anyone who's a wine And how could you potentially embrace this category in order to benefit your wine journey overall? I what can you do? 

Rather than thinking about having to 100 % substitute all of your alcohol-based wines for a non-alcohol version, think instead maybe there's times that you really would love a glass of wine, but you pass on it simply because of the situation or the timing. Maybe it's for lunch the week. It's a business lunch, or maybe it's a weeknight and you've got to get up early the next day, or maybe you're out to dinner, but you've got your kids and family with you and so you can't be driving after a glass of these are great options, great occasions for putting a non-alcoholic wine into your rotation. 

Let's think Monday through Wednesday. Typically on Mondays through Wednesdays, I'm starting my day with coffee and I'm drinking water the rest of the day. And let me tell you, that gets really, really, really boring. So a non-alcoholic wine at dinner on a Tuesday is a to enjoy the wine experience. I already mentioned brunch with my besties.

We had non-alcoholic mimosas and we were able to enjoy the rest of the day. So how could you use this on your weekend brunch to really enjoy the same experience as that mimosa, but without the alcohol? If you're taking ozempic or if you're on a diet or if you have sensitivities to sugar in general, but you have to be careful as we talked about to make sure you're looking at the labels to find those that do have more residual sugar added back in. 

But in general, the calories of one bottle, not one glass of de-alcoholized wine, is around 120 calories. And because these are not alcohol-based, the FDA actually regulates them versus wines, which are regulated by the TTB. So food labeling requirements apply. And so you can generally get all the information, the caloric intake, everything you need simply on the bottle. There are so many new ones to try. here's a few places to get some great options. 

First and foremost, the top rated non-alcoholic wines of 2024. This is always a fan favorite of mine.is to just look at the ones selected by the magazine wine enthusiast. I've put it in the show notes and they've got some great options. So we're drinking things from Gieson, from Sovy, from Frey, Toast, Lyre. These are both the de-alcoholized versions as well as the proxies. And they're super fun. And you can get reds, whites, sparklers, rosés, whatever style you like.

But why is this important to you? There are times in your wine journey when you do want that flavor, you want that experience, but you just don't want the alcohol. And we get it. And that's why we're covering this topic for you today. Because the good news is that the non-alcoholic wine industry is shifting. It's shifting away from simply this GIGO approach or garbage in, garbage out approach. Let's just get something without alcohol on the shelf.

And now we're shifting to quality, we're shifting to flavor, and we're starting with amazing wines on the front end. But sure, they're going to taste slightly different because they're going to give a little bit different mouth feel. Alcohol in wine is going to add weight, it's going to add body, it's going to give you that yummy warming sensation. Or as some people in the industry, wine industry that is, say it gives a wine their

But the non-alcoholic wine trend is here to stay and with more and more wineries putting non-alcoholic wines into their portfolios, it's a really, really good thing. But at the end of the day, if you are trying a low alcohol, non-alcohol or de-alcoholized wine,

Setting your expectations is key because you aren't going to get 100 % of the wine experience. It's not a 100 % substitution, but what you are going to get is these fun and flavorful wine-like beverages that are going to pair with your meals. They're going to give you that sparkling wine experience on a Saturday brunch or on a Tuesday night, or you can use them for a totally new experience all together. 

So set your expectations and the next time you're out shopping for wines to replenish your home, grab a bottle or two of now an alcoholic wines and see for yourself how these can be a really fun way to continue to enjoy the flavor of wine without the alcohol. 

So we know that you are learning so much about wine on Everyday Sommelier and we want you to be in our insider team so you can continue to learn and continue to grow in your wine journey. So go to our website at www.wine-wise.com. It'll be in the show notes. And become an insider by subscribing to our weekly newsletter today.

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This inspiration and continuous learning about wine may have you thinking, how can I take my wine journey to the next level? And you are in luck because on next week's episode, we're going to be covering wine certifications with Jenny Hemmer, who is the executive director of GuildSom. And you're going to walk away knowing what your options are and have all the information you need to decide for yourself if one of these is right for you. 

So pop that cork on a non-alcoholic wine and learn wine your way.