Alcohol, once a defining feature of wine, is now being removed by brands large and small, premium and entry level, in response to the growing thirst for no- and low-alcohol wine on the market.
Non-alcoholic beverages overall experienced 22 percent growth year-over-year, according to a recent NielsenIQ (NIQ) analysis, reaching $925 million in off-premise sales. For many, switching to a no- or low-alcohol wine, beer, or spirit does not preclude enjoying alcohol on other occasions—about 92 percent of non-alcoholic beverage buyers still purchase alcohol, NIQ reports.
Given this overwhelmingly inclusive approach to beverage consumption, led often by occasion-based preference, many producers no longer see non-alcoholic wine as a threat. This expansionary approach to how wine is defined and consumed is also shaping how no- and low-alcohol products are made.
But welcoming innovation and expansion doesn’t mean that the no- and low-alcohol category meets the current market’s desires. Historically, the biggest challenge both producers and consumers of no- and low-alcohol products have faced is that they simply don’t have the body, texture, and layered flavors of traditional wine. For many, the sheer joy of taste is arguably even more central to the experience of enjoying wine than the alcohol itself. But the alcohol often helps deliver the flavors and aromas people have come to love and expect in a glass of wine.
“When it comes to no- and low-alcohol wines, I tend to use a cheesecake analogy,” says Beth Forrest, the winemaker and general manager of Marlborough, New Zealand-based Forrest Wines. “We all love cheesecake. Full fat, full sugar—the joy is a bite that combines the crispy, buttery base, the creamy filling, and the sweet fruit topping. When someone serves you a deconstructed cheesecake, the elements all exist, but the joy of all of them together has been lost.” Forrest’s goal, she explains, is to essentially create full-alcohol flavor, texture, and aroma in wine, without the alcohol, and to achieve that dealcoholized wines must be deconstructed so that the alcohol can be removed, and then put together in a way that delivers full flavor.
It’s no easy task, and the wine industry is at the beginning of the journey. But there are three new areas of research that are spurring winemakers’ excitement to make not just no- and low-alcohol wine that sells, but terroir-reflective bottles that connoisseurs want to drink.
Using yeasts to produce low-alcohol wines
Forrest Wines embarked on its low-alcohol wine journey in 2006, crafting a Kabinett-style Riesling with 9% ABV from the gravels of Marlborough, setting off the first wave of the low-alcohol craze in New Zealand. Then in 2016, Forrest began working with Lallemand and other highly specialized yeast manufacturers in an effort to produce non-alcoholic wines with greater structure and depth.
“Yeasts that are poor converters of sugar and produce less alcohol per gram of sugar produced mixed results depending on types of wine and strains of yeast,” Forrest says. “For us, the huge development in yeast options is more related to texture, mid-palate weight, mouthfeel, roundness, and length of flavor. These have been highly valuable to replace the density of alcohol in wine.”
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