"The second problem: Too many wine lovers are convinced that zero alcohol wines have always sucked and always will suck. These are the people who lit into Martin in the comments on her post."
Same problem with natural wine I reckon. Great article, Dave!
I've had zero alcohol beer both here in the States and in Europe. I also drink hop-infused tea that probably tastes more like an IPA, than some IPAs. Why? I wanted the hoppy flavor and not the buzz and frankly, I might be driving eating cold pizza and what something that tastes like beer.
Moving on to the zero alcohol wine. I haven't had one. As I mentioned in the Dave Baxter post on his tasting series of zero alcohol wine, I'm willing to taste them and I want to know how they are made. I'd also like to know the base product from which they are made and if there were a comparison between the base alcoholic version of the wine and stripped one, that would be fun as well.
Based upon my palate, do I want something with 6g of sugar in it? 12g? While I'm eating my steak? No. And that goes for wine with alcohol in it and zero alcohol. I'd rather have the zero alc beer, non-sweetened hop tea, black coffee, or a Pellegrino.
American's like sweet stuff, so the zero alc wine with extra sugar might just be a category that does well.
“the sector may have legs, so to speak.” I see what you did there.
We sell plenty of AF wines. It’s among our fastest growing sectors. The “wines” are mostly marginal and prices seem to be out of whack with quality, but our customers love them. And what shop doesn’t want their customers to be happy?
I am not against alcohol and am not against "NA wine." I do have a problem with calling NA wine "wine." I am in the camp that asserts wine includes some alcohol because that is part of the taste profile of wine. Also a significant element of wine's social lubrication component. Evaluate NA grape juice as a beverage, sure, but I do not evaluate it as a wine in my posts.
It’s great to see a celebrated wine writer finally take an equitable approach to the topic.
As a former wine bar owner, and award winning sommelier - I started tasting, studying, and educating on dealc wine specifically in 2021. Definitions of all kinds, evolve over time and I believe that’s what’s happening here.
Rachel is doing extraordinary work in this category and the AFNA certification is important as it’s laying a foundation of language that will be critical to our changing definitions of wine.
Respectfully to the retailers saying “no one calls for it” doesn’t mean people don’t want it. And the highest u tapped market - Gen X wine drinkers who aren’t processing alcohol the same as they age, but already live wine.
The category is only going to get better, and I’ve written multiple times on how dealc wine can help save a sometimes flailing wine industry.
Dave, thanks for including a link to my article in your post. You raise some interesting points about NA wines. I believe that there is a space for quality NA beverages and have tasted a few that I like. However, I am still reluctant to call them wine. Time will tell.....
Thank you for taking this on so thoughtfully, Dave. I appreciated your willingness to leave the question open rather than resolve it, and to name the unease around intervention. What feels important to add is that the wine world is also navigating a parallel value: openness to innovation when it meaningfully improves experience. We see this across categories—from skincare to nutrition—where scientific advances are embraced not as shortcuts, but as tools. Holding space for both minimal intervention and thoughtful innovation feels like the real work right now, and I’m glad you allowed that complexity to stand rather than collapsing it into a verdict.
I appreciate this because I've talked to local winemakers who haven't been pleased with NA wine, and so I've been dismissing it as a category with little further thought. It resonates with me that advances in the technology behind winemaking and alcohol removal, as well as rethinking how we make beverages to avoid fermentation into alcohol can create better stuff that can be just as interesting as the wines I love. Thanks for an article that pushed my thinking on this topic.
Thanks for sharing this, Dan. That kind of evolution in thinking is exactly what makes this moment interesting — acknowledging past limits while staying open to what’s changing. Appreciate you engaging it thoughtfully.
Nice to see a good infusion of common sense added to the mix! There’s more going on in this sector than many people realize, as so many are so quick to dismiss possibilities in favour of standard attitudes and easy generalisations (and being casually snotty and sarcastic). An open mind is a terrible thing to waste.
This is great, Dave, thanks for splitting the middle ont his topic. I think, due to drinkers being as defensive as they are, de-alc/non-alc categories neither are pushed, diplayed properly, or bought by the customers of traditional wine or liquor shops. However, they seem to thrive in their own Non-alc dedicated stores, at least here in the coastal cities.
I wish there was more acceptance of both, by both sides. It's not helpful, really, for writers and makers and sellers of alcohol to praise alcohol and denigrate alternative options or "Dry January", etc. Anyone who wants to cut back or abstain will never be persuaded by those whose careers are steeped in the alcohol space. On the other hand, if we acted as though not threatened (rather than simply saying we're not threatened while constantly railing against it), THAT will go so much farther. Say "Sure, yes, de-alc and non-alc alternatives, we love it, bring everybody, we're intrigued where the craftsmanship will go" - now there's a stance that makes us different than big tobacco.
We just started a multi-part tasting of Ultra-Premium de-alc wines on our own Substack (https://vintertainmentstudios.com/p/the-great-ultra-premium-non-alcoholic) with a whole post about red wines dropping next week. We covered Oceano (which was impressive!) and Giesen (which was less so for us) but these are the Premium levels of the space that prove how far it has or hasn't come. And we're super curious to see where we're at and where it might go from here!
Sure, Neo-Prohibitionists are behind cuurrent pushes and whatever, but so what? People don't choose to drink or not drink from their messaging, any more than they do from wine writers fervently decrying de-alc/non-alc and swearing up and down that wine is all about community while nastily attacking whole sections of said community. Wine is so many things. Wine is legion. It's neverending in its variety and expressions. We say that, then clamp down at the first sign of actual innovation. Then demand people take sides and that somehow this is different from the Neo-Prohibitionists. But it's not.
This is a great read, Dave. Having gone from owning a canned beverage brand to now operating in wine, I’ve worked with a ton of retailers and on-premise accounts; the majority of them struggle with sell-through and velocity for N/A wines. They usually don’t even want to touch it.
"The second problem: Too many wine lovers are convinced that zero alcohol wines have always sucked and always will suck. These are the people who lit into Martin in the comments on her post."
Same problem with natural wine I reckon. Great article, Dave!
I've had zero alcohol beer both here in the States and in Europe. I also drink hop-infused tea that probably tastes more like an IPA, than some IPAs. Why? I wanted the hoppy flavor and not the buzz and frankly, I might be driving eating cold pizza and what something that tastes like beer.
Moving on to the zero alcohol wine. I haven't had one. As I mentioned in the Dave Baxter post on his tasting series of zero alcohol wine, I'm willing to taste them and I want to know how they are made. I'd also like to know the base product from which they are made and if there were a comparison between the base alcoholic version of the wine and stripped one, that would be fun as well.
Based upon my palate, do I want something with 6g of sugar in it? 12g? While I'm eating my steak? No. And that goes for wine with alcohol in it and zero alcohol. I'd rather have the zero alc beer, non-sweetened hop tea, black coffee, or a Pellegrino.
American's like sweet stuff, so the zero alc wine with extra sugar might just be a category that does well.
“the sector may have legs, so to speak.” I see what you did there.
We sell plenty of AF wines. It’s among our fastest growing sectors. The “wines” are mostly marginal and prices seem to be out of whack with quality, but our customers love them. And what shop doesn’t want their customers to be happy?
I am not against alcohol and am not against "NA wine." I do have a problem with calling NA wine "wine." I am in the camp that asserts wine includes some alcohol because that is part of the taste profile of wine. Also a significant element of wine's social lubrication component. Evaluate NA grape juice as a beverage, sure, but I do not evaluate it as a wine in my posts.
It’s great to see a celebrated wine writer finally take an equitable approach to the topic.
As a former wine bar owner, and award winning sommelier - I started tasting, studying, and educating on dealc wine specifically in 2021. Definitions of all kinds, evolve over time and I believe that’s what’s happening here.
Rachel is doing extraordinary work in this category and the AFNA certification is important as it’s laying a foundation of language that will be critical to our changing definitions of wine.
Respectfully to the retailers saying “no one calls for it” doesn’t mean people don’t want it. And the highest u tapped market - Gen X wine drinkers who aren’t processing alcohol the same as they age, but already live wine.
The category is only going to get better, and I’ve written multiple times on how dealc wine can help save a sometimes flailing wine industry.
Dave, thanks for including a link to my article in your post. You raise some interesting points about NA wines. I believe that there is a space for quality NA beverages and have tasted a few that I like. However, I am still reluctant to call them wine. Time will tell.....
Thank you for taking this on so thoughtfully, Dave. I appreciated your willingness to leave the question open rather than resolve it, and to name the unease around intervention. What feels important to add is that the wine world is also navigating a parallel value: openness to innovation when it meaningfully improves experience. We see this across categories—from skincare to nutrition—where scientific advances are embraced not as shortcuts, but as tools. Holding space for both minimal intervention and thoughtful innovation feels like the real work right now, and I’m glad you allowed that complexity to stand rather than collapsing it into a verdict.
I appreciate this because I've talked to local winemakers who haven't been pleased with NA wine, and so I've been dismissing it as a category with little further thought. It resonates with me that advances in the technology behind winemaking and alcohol removal, as well as rethinking how we make beverages to avoid fermentation into alcohol can create better stuff that can be just as interesting as the wines I love. Thanks for an article that pushed my thinking on this topic.
Thanks for sharing this, Dan. That kind of evolution in thinking is exactly what makes this moment interesting — acknowledging past limits while staying open to what’s changing. Appreciate you engaging it thoughtfully.
Nice to see a good infusion of common sense added to the mix! There’s more going on in this sector than many people realize, as so many are so quick to dismiss possibilities in favour of standard attitudes and easy generalisations (and being casually snotty and sarcastic). An open mind is a terrible thing to waste.
A college friend of mine used to say an open mind is like an open window. It invites drafts.
Or is it draughts?
This is great, Dave, thanks for splitting the middle ont his topic. I think, due to drinkers being as defensive as they are, de-alc/non-alc categories neither are pushed, diplayed properly, or bought by the customers of traditional wine or liquor shops. However, they seem to thrive in their own Non-alc dedicated stores, at least here in the coastal cities.
I wish there was more acceptance of both, by both sides. It's not helpful, really, for writers and makers and sellers of alcohol to praise alcohol and denigrate alternative options or "Dry January", etc. Anyone who wants to cut back or abstain will never be persuaded by those whose careers are steeped in the alcohol space. On the other hand, if we acted as though not threatened (rather than simply saying we're not threatened while constantly railing against it), THAT will go so much farther. Say "Sure, yes, de-alc and non-alc alternatives, we love it, bring everybody, we're intrigued where the craftsmanship will go" - now there's a stance that makes us different than big tobacco.
We just started a multi-part tasting of Ultra-Premium de-alc wines on our own Substack (https://vintertainmentstudios.com/p/the-great-ultra-premium-non-alcoholic) with a whole post about red wines dropping next week. We covered Oceano (which was impressive!) and Giesen (which was less so for us) but these are the Premium levels of the space that prove how far it has or hasn't come. And we're super curious to see where we're at and where it might go from here!
Sure, Neo-Prohibitionists are behind cuurrent pushes and whatever, but so what? People don't choose to drink or not drink from their messaging, any more than they do from wine writers fervently decrying de-alc/non-alc and swearing up and down that wine is all about community while nastily attacking whole sections of said community. Wine is so many things. Wine is legion. It's neverending in its variety and expressions. We say that, then clamp down at the first sign of actual innovation. Then demand people take sides and that somehow this is different from the Neo-Prohibitionists. But it's not.
Thanks for taking a different tack here.
💯
Read Dave's recent post. I made my other comments above.
This is a great read, Dave. Having gone from owning a canned beverage brand to now operating in wine, I’ve worked with a ton of retailers and on-premise accounts; the majority of them struggle with sell-through and velocity for N/A wines. They usually don’t even want to touch it.
Thank you for this insightful write up.