In recent years, mocktails have graduated to more sophisticated bar menu names like “spirit-free” and “zero-proof”—but the widespread adoption of nonalcoholic wine, at least on bottle lists in the United States, has been a slower burn.
While still versions of these products become more available and accessible, it seems the category’s road to reaching the mainstream is paved by bubbly.
“We see nonalcoholic sparkling wine as a clear entrance into the space for many drinkers,” says Dorothy Munholland, cofounder of San Francisco–based nonalcoholic wine label Studio Null, which produces a bright, bracing dealcoholized sparkling verdejo from the Rueda region of Spain. She notes that the acidity, mouthfeel, and overall experience of drinking booze-free bubbly more closely replicates the original than many still dealcoholized red and white wines can.
“To get an excellent nonalcoholic result, you need to have a premium product going in,” explains Catherine Diao, another cofounder at Studio Null, which has been producing still and sparkling dealcoholized wines since 2021.
But how are dealcoholized products made in the first place? There are a number of methods, from the vacuum distillation that winemakers favor to osmosis filtration used in nonalc beer production. We break down the methods.
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How dealcoholized wine is made
Like most brands in the category, Studio Null uses a vacuum distillation method that subjects fully fermented alcoholic wine to high pressure, which lowers ethanol’s boiling point. The wines are heated to just under boiling to flush out the ethanol alcohol, but as a side effect, some more volatile flavor or aromatic compounds are also lost. “The note of passionfruit famously doesn’t survive the dealcoholization process,” says Mehmet Gürbüzer, chief operating officer of Oddbird, a dealcoholized wine brand founded in 2013. “That compound is very complex, and once you remove the sugars [and alcohol], it doesn’t stick in the process.”
To keep some of those flightier elements in the mix, many winemakers implement a sort of chemical “closed loop system” that reintroduces elements like mouthfeel, how the wine settles or changes over time, and flavors in the mid-palate. Ideally, nothing new is added to the wine at this stage.
“Our approach is to remain as close as possible to the original expression of the wine that we source. Because we start with super-premium wines, we want the bottles to reflect the varietals we selected in the first place,” Munholland explains.
How are dealcoholized wines and wine alternatives different?
Although drinkers tend to group wine-occasion beverages together, Victoria Watters, cofounder of nonalcoholic drink resource Dry Atlas, uses an easy one-liner to summarize the differences: “Nonalcoholic wine starts with an alcoholic wine base, and alcohol is removed. Proxies, on the other hand, are built from the ground up,” she explains.
To name a few: Jukes, a wine alternative from the United Kingdom, features a base of apple cider vinegar enhanced with natural pineapple, plums, or peach juice; Proxies (a brand named after the broader term for the category) is a blend of teas, spices, fruit juices, and verjus, or pressed, unfermented wine juice from unripened grapes. Verjus is also the base of fizzy, shrub-like Kally (also available in a “classic” still offering). Because alcohol is never part of the equation, these alternatives are able to achieve 0.0% ABV, while most dealcoholized wines clock in at a (negligible, but still present) 0.5% ABV.
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