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Alcohol-free Wine

Alcohol Free

Non-alcoholic is booming, driven by an ever-increasing global demand. Between sparkling grape juice and dealcoholized wines of all kinds, sparkling, white, rosé or red, not to mention cocktails and other alternative drinks, there is something for all tastes and moods. Enough to lose your mind but not your means.

Wine above all

To make an alcohol-free wine, we start by making... a wine. You read that right: we don't start with grape juice, but with a wine in all its complexity. This is important to emphasize, because if the dealcoholization process transforms the wine, it retains its deep identity.

There are different methods available today to reduce or eliminate alcohol from wine. The oldest, simplest and cheapest is boiling. Quite simply. It turns out that alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water. All you have to do is heat the wine so that the alcohol evaporates.

A wine in turmoil

The problem is that the liquid must be heated to 78°C for the ethanol to escape, which brings undesirable tastes, such as cooked fruit. We also lose fragile aromatic compounds, essential to the complexity of the wine. For a long time, dealcoholized wines were therefore seen as poor quality products.

Increased demand and scientific progress have made it possible to develop other solutions and refine boiling:

Reverse osmosis

This high-tech approach uses very fine membranes to separate the wine into two streams, one rich in alcohol and another that contains mostly water and aromas. The alcohol is removed from the first and the two are reassembled. The method is perfect for reducing alcohol by a few percent, but not eliminating it completely, at a reasonable cost.

The so-called rotating cone column method

It spreads the wine into a very thin film, in order to extract, by heating, the volatile aromatic compounds, then the alcohol. The aromatic compounds are then reintegrated into the wine at the desired alcohol level. This technology is only financially viable for large volumes of wine.

The most common method therefore remains the good old boiling but under vacuum, which changes everything. The alcohol evaporates very gently, very slowly, at low temperature. This avoids "cooking" the wine and limits the loss of precious volatile aromas. The latter can also be captured and reintroduced afterwards.

The art of assembly 2.0

The removal of alcohol is felt as a loss of "weight" in the mouth. A dealcoholized wine often has less body, while its astringency and acidity stand out. It is therefore necessary to rebalance it by adding ingredients. The first is sugar, generally in the form of specially prepared grape must, its professional nickname rectified concentrated grape must. Note that sugar is less caloric than alcohol!

To compensate for the bodily and taste losses due to dealcoholization, we can also add natural aromas derived from grapes, tannins or glycerol, a very common liquid, transparent, viscous, colorless, odorless, with a sweet taste, 100% natural, and obviously non-toxic! Glycerol is already present in wine in variable quantities, and it is often added in alcohol-free versions to improve the body and texture.

Wine...and everything else

There are of course many other drinks that aim to reproduce or replace the idea and sensation of wine. Today we are spoiled for choice. There is notably sparkling tea, often enhanced with other ingredients, for very complex recipes. We can also mention kombucha or kefir, very old fermented drinks, which are coming back into fashion today!

Gastronomy is evolving, and restaurants are innovating by offering homemade food and non-alcoholic beverage pairings. All the establishments of the Anne-Sophie Pic group (the most Michelin-starred chef in the world at the time of writing, after all!), whether in Valencia, Hong Kong or Lausanne, have been offering real complete and alcohol-free experiences since 2020.