Beyond Bacchanalia: The Next Generation of Non-Alcoholic ‘Wines’
Despite alcoholic wine accounting for upwards of 30% of the total alcoholic beverage market, its non-alcoholic counterpart represents a much smaller proportion within the burgeoning non-alc space.
It’s safe to say that non-alcoholic wine has struggled to convince the moderating vinophile, and with prices often sitting at the audaciously premium end of the spectrum neither has it managed to capture the hearts and pockets of the more mainstream drinker.
Two factors are no doubt driving this:
The Drinking Experience
Despite multiple attempts at preserving the wine’s original character, when de-alcoholised the resultant liquid usually feels thin, incoherent, or overbearingly sweet due to the addition of excess sugar which provides volume. Like building a French sauce without butter, the logic of the wine seems to fall apart – leaving behind a ghost of an experience that rarely hits the spot (though there are exceptions - cue Wednesday Wines).
Value Exchange
Non-alcoholic wine is typically marketed through the lens of lack. By foregrounding its 0.0% credentials, the consumer is necessarily presented with a product defined by absence, as supposed to the pleasure it can offer. This makes demanding a premium feel courageous at best, arrogant at worst.
Whilst, in time, the overall drinking experience may well improve as dealcoholisation technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, a new generation of non-traditional wine-substitutes are already emerging. Foregrounding the depth and complexity of their liquids, paired with novel approaches to ‘terroir’ – they’re offering up convincing alternatives that operate on their own terms.
Proxies
Based out of Toronto, Proxies are a next-gen wine-substitute designed for the sober-curious vinophile.
Complex, full-bodied when required, constructed with the precision of a parfumier - their liquids have been specifically designed to pair with foods, and developed in collaboration with chefs and sommeliers. Combining wine grapes, other fruits, spices, teas and ferments - their expressions are sophisticated, deeply adult options that deliver on both taste and table talk.
Liberated from the traditional orthodoxies of wine-making, they’re finding ever more creative ways to deliver on the tart, tannic feel of a good red. In their 2022 collaboration with James Beard award-winning chef - Sean Brock - Proxies created a custom blend inspired by Appalachian food culture. Made with ‘leather britches’ - a traditional, preserved string bean, rich in umami flavours - the resulting liquid is dry, animalic, earthy, and with a story around terroir rich enough to satisfy the heritage-buff.
Muri
Defiantly not a wine-alternative, though specifically designed for the wine occasion, Muri is the brainchild of former Empirical Spirits distiller, and Noma alumnus Murray Paterson. Their innovative cuvées are inspired by the rich culinary traditions of Copenhagen, and the surrounding Danish landscape – bringing together diverse ingredients and techniques to form a modern, experimental expression of terroir.
Borrowing from the Noma toolkit, using techniques like dry carbonic maceration, wood smoking, and lacto fermentation, the fact that their creations don’t contain alcohol feels like an afterthought. The value of these precisely designed liquids is abundantly clear, with or without an ethanol buzz.
Ambijus
Kombucha has emerged as a convincing frontrunner within the sparkling wine occasion due to its refreshing, yet subtly complex profile. Served in Heston Blumenthal’s ‘The Fat Duck’, Nordic producer Ambijus has taken this traditional Chinese beverage and spiked it with local flora in their state of the art suburban laboratory.
Focusing less on pin-holing themselves into any given category – their liquids are designed to offer up a uniquely evocative ‘flavour experience’ that defies definition. Whilst many of their ingredients are deeply rooted in Nordic tradition, they believe that the lab, not the landscape, is their terroir – a novel concept for exploring ideas around provenance and process.
