Dry(er) January: Exploring Non-Alcoholic Wines and Naturally Low-Alcoh

Just over a week into Dry January, I thought I’d share my experience of seeking out as many non-alcoholic wines as possible over the last year. I have tasted them at trade events & conferences, solicited samples from my wholesale distributors, and purchased them at markets and restaurants. My conclusion is that the vast majority of them taste like SH**.

What’s Wrong with Non-Alcholic Wines?

Usually, they are either too sweet or too sour and taste nothing like wine. Non-alcoholic beer tastes like beer, & mocktails taste like cocktails but with wine, alcohol makes up roughly 12-15% of the beverage, and removing it also removes the grape varietal characteristics. Also, growing grapes and then fermenting the grape juice is already an expensive process. Adding another costly process of removing the alcohol means that most of these products are made from the cheapest bulk wine available, especially since consumers are not willing to pay extra for alcohol removal. Garbage in, garbage out.

How Do Non-Alcoholic Wine Production Methods Cause Them to Taste Bad?

Some non-alcoholic wines are not wine at all, but simply sterilized grape juice and these can be tasty but sweet and not wine-like. The de-alcoholized wines are almost always sour and thin. The main ways to remove the alcohol from wines are spinning cones, vacuum distillation, and reverse osmosis. It’s hilarious that consumers are being fed that natural wines are the only wines they should be drinking and at the same time being told non-alcoholic wines are healthier. Even if you grow the grapes organically and make the wine organically, which are both expensive and thus doubtful, then they are put through the most extreme manipulation possible in stripping the alcohol out of them. There is nothing natural about this!

What’s the Alternative to Non Alcoholic Wines?

Instead of taking bulk wine grown in hot climates where it is easy & inexpensive to get a large crop and then removing alcohol, how about buying wines grown in cool climates that have naturally lower alcohol without manipulation? As I said before, the vast majority of wines around the world are 12-15% alcohol. There are off-dry and sweet wines with interrupted fermentation that are 5-7% alcohol and very cool climate wines from Germany that are sometimes 8-9% alcohol. Likewise, there are wines from hot regions that that are 15-17% alcohol or fortified wines that reach as high as 22% alcohol. While it may seem obvious to some, many consumers do not understand that warmer regions allow grapes to ripen more fully, and more sugar in the grapes means more potential alcohol. So, what are consumers to do? They can actively seek out wines from cool climates. There is a big difference between drinking 1-2 glasses a day with your dinner of 12% alcohol wine than the same quantity of 16% alcohol wine!

Why Are We Getting Bombarded with “All Alcohol is Bad” News Articles?

Felicity Carter pulled the curtains back on the conflicts of interest in the new World Health Organization’s guidelines and the flood of neo-prohibition energy around the world in an April 2024 article in Wine Business and Jeff Siegel pointed out more contradictions in Slate in May 2024. The WHO’s studies were largely influenced by Movendi International, which describes itself as "the largest independent global movement for development through alcohol prevention." I would argue that media in the US and globally are also being fed press releases by Movendi and the American Prohibition Party. They seriously think that national prohibition worked so well the first time that we should do it again. Never mind the massive surge in organized crime that accompanied that. The more articles we see about the dangers of any alcohol that are based on funded, flawed, biased studies, the more publications and bloggers think that they should write about it, too. And most wineries are making non-alcoholic wines out of preservation in case wine consumption completely tanks. Open Table had an e-blast earlier this week that sited their survey results stating, “41% of Americans are likely or very likely to drink mocktails/non-alcoholic drinks at a restaurant”. That is not surprising given that 38% of Americans of drinking age never drink alcohol. The Pew Research Center has been tracking this for over 50 years and their last report is a short, interesting read.

Why Choose Moderation With Alcohol Over the Seesaw of Dry & Wet Months?

Dry January was launched in 2013 in the UK as a public health initiative and it rapidly spread globally. This and Sober October are noble on face value. Alcohol and drug addiction are serious problems with massive health, life, and economic repercussions. Lives are ruined and ended by excessive consumption. Does Dry January really benefit people if it is just to recover from “Bender December” before charging into “Back to Booze February”? Instead of yo-yo diets from calories or alcohol, consistent moderation in all things is much healthier. As my partner Kristin Campbell said, “Living a life of extremes is hard and mom always said everything in moderation”. I half-jokingly say that anyone who drinks wine without food is an alcoholic and anyone who eats dinner without wine is probably under the weather. My meaning is that wine aids digestion and makes food more delicious, and that wine should be a condiment at the table and not a drug. There are many studies about the decreased risk of heart attacks, strokes, and diabetes with moderate wine consumption that is completely wiped out with excessive consumption. Some of these articles and related studies are listed below. There are individuals who should stop drinking altogether instead of skipping one month. For the rest of us, moderation is the key to EVERYTHING!

Dry(er) January at the Secret Wine Bar at San Francisco Wine School

At San Francisco Wine School’s new Secret Wine Bar that is open every Friday evening, we are going dry(er) instead of dry. We’ll be focusing on wines from cooler regions with naturally lower alcohol. These are the wines that we generally prefer anyway. Whether from Europe or newer wine regions, the brighter acidity refreshes the palate for the next bite of food, enhances the taste of the food, and since they typically have less oak, they allow a sense of place to shine through. We're pouring 2 non-alcoholic selections all month: Seaglass Alcohol Removed Sauvignon Blanc from CA’s Central Coast and NON No. 1 Salted Raspberry Chamomile from Australia. For naturally low alcohol wines we will have German sparkling wine, Txakolina from Spain, Aligote from Oregon, Chablis from France, Zweigelt Rosé and Blaufrankisch Red from Austria, early picked Barbera from Amador, & more.