Sommelier Tries Non-Alcoholic Wines For The First Time
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- Опубликовано: 1 янв 2024
- Do Non-Alcoholic wines hold up to their boozy counterparts? Let’s find out. Also, did you know there are new processes for making NA wines which threaten to change the wine world forever? You’re going to want to know what we found.
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That's my problem with alcohol removed wines, they are WAY too sweet for my taste. 12 grams of sugar per 8 oz is incredibly sweet.
For comparison's sake: 12 grams of sugar is less than half the sweetness as a can of Coke. For the red wine it was noticeable; the white wines had less (around ~6). Still, it brings up a good point that if you remove the alcohol where are you getting the body in the wine? It was noticeably missing and we needed something to counteract the acidity. Now I'm curious how Kombucha does it!
yeah that does sound a lot. I had a sparkling “light juice” 12 oz with 6-8 grams sugar (that too natural sugar in juice, not added) and it tasted quite sweet. It might be noticeable even with tannins and more off-putting in wines. Trying to go no sugar, low alcohol, low carb gets tough. 😅 Hope it improves without getting replaced with too many worse chemicals as it usually happens.
@nirakara111 - yeah, if you're going no/low alcohol, no sugar, no/low carb - kombucha is probably the best ticket. It's no wonder GT's has blown up.
@@Winefolly not there yet, at least not in the no alcohol/ low alcohol domain 😂 quite a feat if one loves big reds, but as of now just looking to see if those can be occasionally “replaced” by these new finds. Although replace is not the best word! Thanks for sharing things that might help in that direction.
Holy cow, I’d didn’t believe you before watching the video, but you’re right that’s way too much sugar. Well I’ll probably try it because certainly they do that intentionally for a reason, but it just doesn’t sound good….
If you live in the Vancouver area, there is a new non-alcoholic Bottle Shop and Beverage Room called Bevees in Port Coquitlam. BCs, likely Canada's, largest selection of non-alcoholic spirits, wine, moctails, and beer. Full lounge and bar as well. Samples provided.
The Drive Canteen on Commercial Drive has an amazing selection as well! For the folks in Vancouver
I’ve been drinking non alcohol wines off and on for the last two years. My favorite is Codorníu Zero Sparkling Wine.
I tried NA Edenvale Napa over Christmas. As a drink with mild cheese or appetizers it was ok. But when I tried it with a prime rib dinner it tasted like grape juice. What you pair it with makes a difference.
I think I found pretty much all I wanted to know about non-alcoholic wines. Great video and discussions information in comments. Thank you Madeline and team! I drink wines mostly for the aromas (and taste) but always wished that it tasted the same w/out alcohol, more so these days. I’d heard about these but was really “afraid” of trying as I thought it might taste as bad as the decaffeinated tea that I had had 😢 Well, I might give it a try now but I really wish they’d do something about that sugar and dimethyl carbonate (I know, ironic being more open to alcohol than sugar 😂). If sugar is just added to lower the tannic feel it would be much easier to get rid of! Just bring on the tannins! As a big red drinker I’d even be open to low alcohol and big mouthfeel with tannins… putting in a word through you influencer folks 😊
One other question, I am guessing w/out alchohol, it would need to be consumed pretty quickly. And I hope the vintages and “expirations” are indicated? Would a 2020 vintage be good to drink now and until when?
Im so happy to see this. I'm actually interested in becoming a somolier but strictly for non alcoholic wines. NA wine is my hobby. I've tried some ranges but more and more keep coming. Some have vitages and some dont . Fre wines do not have vintage but the recently made a vintage line called Lumira they vintage Chardonnay and a red blend. Ive also tried most of Fre's range, and they have a new Sauvignon Blanc that they released last year. It is currently my favorite from them. I have not tried their vintage range. Stella Rosa has an N/A range, and so does Gieisen. Gieisen has a very summery Riesling. Other interesting ranges that I want try are Carl Jung's Winery range, and Non.
Yes!!!! The world needs you!
Hi, thanks for the video. Could you please add a link to the paper for the 2023 research mentioned at the beginning of the video? I would like to reference it please.
All of these are customers favs at our shop! Try Joyous' Cabernet next please. Its great.
Love this comment! Thanks for the rec!!!
Thank you for the video & information. The non alcoholic wine we had did taste fruit juice, not too bad actually. Will stick to alcoholic ones for now (or until the liver says otherwise 😊). Big cheers from Melbourne 🍷!
The NON from Australia has Garam Masala too (a common spice found in India which is a mixture of many spices) ❤
the spice profile on that proxy really felt like how Oak aging adds notes of brown baking spices (like allspice, vanilla bean, etc). I thought it was really cool!
@@Winefolly ❤️👍🏼✨🙌🏼
I've only tried NA beers, which have improved drastically during lockdown. NA spirits don't have the right texture as distilled spirits (way too thin), and NA wines are inconsistent. A lot of it is just partially fermented grape juice that has alcohol removed. I will give the Hand on Heart a try because it looks like it is looks like it is fully fermented and therefore shouldn't have that much residual sugar.
yeah, you definitely want the fully fermented and de-alcoholized through a specific process wines. I was impressed with a few in the tasting. They ended up getting enjoyed over the holiday!
That's actually a good description of what NA wine tastes like, including Hand on Heart. The fiancee and I tried the Hand on Heart recently, and it was actually the worst one we're tried so far. It has that "partially fermented grape juice" flavor, but also has just a pretty bad flavor overall. We didn't even find it remotely drinkable. I'd personally say to just skip NA wine altogether. I too have found far better luck with certain brands of NA beer such as Partake.
@@therealmitch-a-palooza7262 some of us don't have the option to just skip NA wines if we want to have a wine experiance with our meals. Pregnancy, religion, medications, or health concerns prevent us from having classical alcoholic wines.
I tried a De-alcoholized Cap Classique during new years and while it certainly gave the experience and sensation of a good sparkling wine, I felt that the taste was lacking. By removing the alcohol I've felt that the acidity was too overpowering and it didn't have the flavor profile to compensate. It only had 1.8g of residual sugar, so maybe a demi-sec de-alcoholized sparkling wine would be more interesting or maybe a blend that wasn't just pinot noir and chardonnay, maybe more aromatic varieties.
Still, it is a new field and I'm glad that there are producers trying to give these offering to the market.
Honestly, I feel straight up lied to by Wine Folly, here. Tried both the Misty Cliffs and Hand on Heart (as seen here) de-alcoholized cabernets the other day. And holy god....***disgusting***. Both were extremely sweet with very little actual "wine" flavor, it was like drinking really old grape juice, and the Hand on Heart was actually the (much) worse of the two with just a really bad flavor to it overall. I don't see myself as a particularly pretentious wine drinker, but there is NO WAY that Madeline could have tasted that and thought it had either the aroma or taste of actual wine. The reviews on Vivino for the Hand on Heart are equally as negative as mine is here. Neither me or my fiancee found them even so much as drinkable. But these are far from the first NA wines I've tried, and I haven't yet found an NA wine that doesn't taste like partially fermented grape juice. Do yourself a favor, and if you're having a dry night and want something made from grapes, just buy some actual grape juice or something. It'll be no sweeter, yet far nicer to drink.
Side Note: Aside from the bad/off flavors that these NA wines tend to carry, the de-alcoholization process has not improved in the last 10 years since I first started trying them here and there in the hopes a decent one would come along. Even the best NA wines I've had that don't have a straight up bad flavor, simply taste flat and hollow. I am convinced that, in addition to the ethanol, the de-alcoholization process also strips most of the other volatile organic compounds that comprise the aromatics and flavors that develop during the fermentation process. And then to try and make up for that, they add sugar back in to try and make it palatable (which in actuality, it doesn't).
WoW! You had a lot of thoughts there to get out!
What I should have said first hand - was if you're looking for a bold red Cabernet Sauvignon of exceptional quality, it has to start with the quality of grapes you're using. For $15 minus the cost of the NA process, this is a value bottle. I was regarding it as such.
I would say that in terms of aromatics, we had a lot of similarities, but if you're looking for the taste complexity that you get with alcohol, it was lacking.
The white wines and sparkling wines came through for me, but again, it's because they focus on aromatics, which the 2 wines (NA and regular) share. But yeah, that body from alcohol wasn't there.
I would encourage you to try maybe that Noughty Sparkling before you rage quit on NA wines. It did not suck. Albeit, this is a relativistic way of looking at it considering the cost / quality-level.
@@Winefolly no disrespect intended, but this response seems a bit disingenuous. The problem with NA wine isn't that it's not "exceptional". People don't try these with the expectation they'd be as nice as the $50-100 bottles of Barolo in their cellar, but just with the hope they might be merely okay, or at least drinkable. Personally, my weekday mainstays include the $12 Castle Rock Mendocino County pinot noir, and the $13 The Crusher petit sirah. Both are rather good, and I don't think price really dictates quality as much as most people think it does. In fact, I think almost every wine drinker has realized that as well. The problem with NA wines like the Hand on Heart which was recommended in this video, is that they genuinely taste bad. I don't mean "bad" in that they lack complexity or elegance, but in that the flavor is off-putting and not at all pleasant or enjoyable. The reviews on Vivino and other sites for the HoH cabernet echo my findings that it is just straight up *foul*.
My fiancee and I have been taking your courses, buying your books, and watching your videos for some time. So when you enthusiastically exclaimed how aromatic and tasty this wine was, we trekked out to go buy it (against my better judgement) along with some other NA wines as well. I'm just sort of annoyed that I didn't look up the reviews ahead of time, and ended up having to dump $35 in wine down the drain (with another $50 worth still yet to try). It was truly that bad, and selling viewers this stuff with a positive gasp and smile into the camera like that only serves to knock your own credibility.
The fact is, it's basic chemistry as to why NA wines just aren't a viable alternative to dry night "drinking". They can remove the ethanol fairly easily because it's a volatile organic compound, but so are the compounds that comprise the aromatics in wine. There isn't really a way to purely target the ethanol and leave the other VOC's intact. There are some compounds such as tannic acid that are not VOC's and purely hit the tongue rather than the nose, but taste is mostly smell after all. These processes adulterate the wine in such a way that it inevitably just tastes flat, watery, and hollow (at best). It's just not worth the money, because the de-alcoholization process strips out most everything that makes wine taste and smell like....wine. Maybe it's different for others, but to me, the point of a dry night is to cut calories. Sugary wine water won't accomplish that. So...I'm going to stick with carbonated water and a lime wedge.
I do recommend Natureo as an alcohol free brand. I think it’s delocalised wine from Familia Torres in Spain
I've had a few non-alcoholic / de-alcoholised wines & I'm mostly not impressed. They taste like a posh fruit juice, but you're paying a premium for it. No comparison in my view
I prefer non-alcoholic larger & gin, they're much closer to the alcoholic alternative I reckon.
I'd love non-alcoholic wine to taste more like wine. I'm looking forward to the future...
thanks for your notes! It's definitely an arena with potential. The NA gins we've had from London were IMPRESSIVE!
My favorite non-alcoholic wine is Fre Brut Sparkling wine. It wass dryer, less sweet, just as a Brut should be. I also like Fre’s Chardonnay.
I tried a red and a white NA wines last year and it was... not good. The red one was especially mediocre. Tasted like grape juice, and not the best one. I'll try again sometime.
Thanks for your notes. Yes, the whites and sparklings seem to perform better than the red. We just rely so heavily on the alcohol to add body to the red that it was missed. However, as something to sip and savor for someone looking for an NA option, it's better than they've done in the past.
Is there any way I can buy the wine folly book. The one you are using in video.
shop.winefolly.com/products/the-master-guide yes!👍
Interesting tasting. Thankyou. Can you share where did you found the 2023 Study? I am working in my paper for WSET Diploma D6 .
Oh you bet! here it is: journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004193 Good luck on DIPLOMA!!!!
@@Winefolly thank you!!!
Non alcoholic wines are a great addition to bars and restaurants for designated drivers or non drinkers to enjoy the fun with their group.
Hi funny to hear from you among these vids, remarkable description. There is too much pollution in the netherlands so i had to use wine in the kitchen as tapwater filters also made the water has no minerals. The high percentage alcohol is much better and not much worries. The ways they make alcoholfree are indeed various. I also try to get out the alcohol before cooking. Storing pf alcoholfree needed sweetness while yeasting eats the sugar and creates the dry result. Same process the best cheese is made in switzerland. It had to be very big cheese wheel to ferment slowly. Cheers. I shouldnt wait too long until the next glass i noticed. Is for sure medical
As a Muslim, I want these for recipes. That's all. I wanna see how much better it makes my recipes.
This is the most difficult category of alcohol to get right. Breweries have nailed it. NA Spirits get the flavor correct for the most part, but due to how they are made you must make some kind of cocktail with them. They are effectively teas as they never went through the fermentation/distillation process.
NA Wine, in general is just bad. I've had the Hand on Heart brand (Cab & Chard) and they are just not good. But that's most NA wines so far for me. They really have no complexity and taste like apple/grape juice. Rosés especially come across as apple juice to me. Sparkling NA wines tend to be the best because they are tricking the palate. I did have a Verdejo NA wine a couple days ago, and it was the closest to actually tasting like a wine. It does come across as sweet and first, but finishes dry.
Lower ABV wines are OK as long as they have at least 9% ABV. Below that they get too thin. I had a long discussion with Anne Bousquet a couple months ago about this when she visited San Antonio. So a low alcohol wine around 1% probably isn't much better IMO.
Of the others in this video, I have heard that the Leitz Riesling was decent. I actually had a good fellow somm friend tell me this over the weekend. I do agree with another commenter that since this is a sponsored video, it's does feel more like an ad than a review.
Love your comment about the sparkling NA wines. Great points here. I liked the HoH SB, the Leitz, and maybe the noughty most of all :)
I will try to find this wine, but I have tried a plethora of NA wines and the red wines have been too sweet or flavorless. I have tried adding bitters to enhance the flavor without success. If I am able to find this brand I will let you know what I think. I would really like a NA wine for everyday drinking.
Great comments. Yes, red wines are more challenging to produce given the tannins
I tried the wine and it tasted like Welch’s Grape juice with a hint of smokiness. It’s by far not the worst NA wine I have tried. Today I will try adding different bitters to enhance the drinking experience. Thank you for the recommendation.
We like to have low or no alcohol wine when we are out on our boat. Full alcohol drinks make a terrible combination with heat, humidity, and the hours of rocking on the waves.
Sooooo smart!
I tried drinking and cooking with non-alcoholic "wine" a few years ago. For a short period. It works better, for me, to cook with it. Drinking it was disappointing, more like drinking flgrape juice. Perhaps the process of removing the alcohol has improved in the interim.
ooof sorry to hear that. Sugar levels were noticeable in the red over the whites if that helps.
When you cook with wine the percentage in the total dish is low to begin with, And because you cook it, and alcohol eveporates at 72 celsius, almost nothing is left in the end product.
I miss wine most for how it compliments certain cuisine. I spend part of the year in Spain and I also frequently enjoy Italian food. I find Spanish and Italian cuisine is designed to have wine as a complement. Without the wine, the dish is incomplete. This has given me much grief as I am determined to reduce how frequently I drink alcohol for the sake of my good health. Recently it occurred to me that hibiscus tea has qualities which complement Spanish and Italian cuisine well. So, I'm presently experimenting with recipes based on hibiscus tea. I'm not looking to imitate red wine, I'm looking to create a balance of flavors which complements Spanish and Italian cuisine a way analogous to how red wine does.
I believe I'll eventually develop a recipe I'm happy with, and once I do, I will enjoy the independence that having a good recipe from easily accessible ingredients offers. But regardless of that, I still need as much variety in as possible to be able to match to different foods and also to not get bored over many years of dining without alcohol. So, thank you very much for reviewing these products. It's great to have the opinion of a sommelier.
Excellent alternative idea! Yes, tannins and acidity can be found in many teas :)
Wish I can try it in India, where im based off of 😔
Well--there's no free lunch. No joy without a little pain.
One question is whether non-alcoholic is really healthier. Sure, alcohol is bad. But in food (and in beverage), the worst thing is often the processing. Good wine is not processed artificially, it's by and large a natural product. The action of removing the alcohol means it's a now a processed product, which probably means you don't end up with a fairly unhealthy product, albeit without alcohol. As long as you drink in moderation, you are probably better off with alcoholic wine, both in terms of health and enjoyment.
Simple, there are two ways to promote zero ALC.
1. Make a properper package and charge it super expensive.
2. Famous chateau to make their wine zero alc. For eg, pomerol zero.
In Europe, most de-alcoholized wines have dimethyl carbonate as a preservative. Most people don’t notice this, but for me it is a horrible off-smell. Any information on dimethyl carbonate US wines?
Sorry, it is dimethyl dicarbonate which is added to the wines
According to FDA approval in 1988 Dimethyl dicarbonate is classified as a "processing aid" and not a chemical preservative and therefore doesn't have to be listed on the nutrition facts label. It's used in many beverages from fruit juices, bottled teas and wine, to various sodas. We can assume it's probably being used in NA wines as well.
Why does it exist?
The agent, colloquially known as "Velcorin" (the brand name) stops microbial growth (specifically yeast and refermentation) which would occur in de-alcoholized wines and sweet wines. It also combats Brett, which has a big off aroma (smells like barnyard) in regular wine.
As far as aromas, the most useful bit of information I could find for you about it is from UC Davis which suggests it isn't detectable in the amounts used: wineserver.ucdavis.edu/industry-info/enology/methods-and-techniques/common-chemical-reagents/velcorin - how would you describe the off-smell? I'm curious to know more of your direct experience with it if any.
There are lots of reasons to use or not use Velcorin. The biggest issue that I saw in the case of N/A wines, is that wine without the alcohol has nothing to fortify it from microbial growth. That's a problem. We've removed the alcohol which acts as a preservative. So, we've got to add something to stabilize the NA wine, so it doesn't become a petri dish of microbial growth.
Of course, this raises the question: how many beverages use Velcorin and what other ways can we stabilize wine in a non-offending way?
@@Winefolly Thanks for this detailed response. Some European N/A wines mention it on the back label, as E-242, but this declaration is not required. It is supposed to decompose to methanol and CO2, both of which nobody could notice at the used concentrations. I suspect that this chemical may react with other wine compounds before decomposition, to create the smell I am noticing in all N/A wines tried so far. Or it is something else, not the E-242? It would be nice to have good N/A wine, for example when dining out but being the designated driver.
@@Winefolly As far as the smell is concerned, I would agree with Wikipedia, for me it is also “pungent”, for my wife too, but we have friends who don’t seem to notice it. I understand that “pungent” is not very specific.
Wiki: Dimethyl dicarbonate (DMDC) is a colorless liquid and a pungent odor at high concentration at room temperature.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_dicarbonate
I found information that it is used because it is cheaper than sterile filtration, which would also remove yeast and bacteria (but maybe also some taste elemens, thinking of Kermit Lynch, the enemy of filtration).
@@eniggli Yes right! Yeah, the word pungent for me was not enough! hahaha. Pungent like what? a poo? an antiseptic? old cheese? that's what I was trying to identify. Def let me know when you sense it again. Yes. I am a fan to sterile filtration / cross flow filtration actually. It seems like a really great mechanical way to remove microbes and insure stability without additives. But of course, I get the flavor argument people like those at Kermit Lynch have - unfiltered wines have something filtered wines don't. It's like a body or texture and a funkiness - essentially, it's rich with its natural imperfections.
I usually love your videos, but this one feels straight up like an ad…
Thanks for the feedback, we'll clear things up with what the sponsor paid for (and what they can't pay for) on the next go around. They can't buy opinions or reviews.
🤔😳🤔😳🤔😳😳😳🤔🤔🤔 I’ll only will give it a try if they ever make an N/A Barolo 😊
OMG. I would totally try NA Barolo.
I'm on my 4th bottle and i still don't have a lampshade on my head 🤷♂️
😂😂😂
i cant help feel this is too good to be true, should have done it blind or something.. i bet it is not really that great, but i really would hope so. cause if wine could taste as great but without alcohol, i'm all aboard.
You can DEFINITELY tell the difference between the two. They aren't the same at all. However, as a beverage served in a wine glass to sip and savor, I would say it has potential for people looking for alcohol-free alternatives. Much more so than in the past.
Just the fact that the she's tasting the wines from the video sponsor makes this review disingenuous and masked as an add for the non alcoholic wine brand...if you taste both side to side you'll very noticeably taste the difference.
Biggest challenge for me with no and low is finding unbiased comparisons and reviews. This video is clearly biased towards the wines provided by the sponsor so in my opinion it is of little value. It would have been far better to review wines objectively that you were not financially tied to in any way.
Ah yes. Interesting feedback.
This isn't a review about these individual wines - it is a general discussion on NA wines and whether or not they are a viable alternative to wine. Which I felt they were at the price range (generally value priced). The "Learn by Tasting" videos we do are probably the closest thing to a review.
I can perhaps specify what part of the video the sponsor is paying for. They are not paying for a review, and the tasting notes we provide are agnostic and we do not give our opinions about the wine.
I believe the new de-alcoholizing process has greatly improved the category of NA wines as a whole. For the prices these were at, they were comparable to other standard wines out there. Albeit, they did taste different and featured new traits like added grape sugar.
I love de alcoholized wine
Definitely nothing I would ever even be interesting in trying, nevermind actually drinking
glad we did the heavy lifting then!
All the elegance, few downside 😊
Welches was the biggest U.S. grape producer in the early 1900's. Great for school lunches but this is a complete snubbing in the nose of the last 500+ years of artistry of world-wide wine development and production. What's next. . .THC free pot?
They have THC-free cannabis! - strains bred to have really high levels of CBD and little to no THC - they're used, for example, by people who suffer from epilepsy.
My issue is im 13
This review is sponsored, I cannot take it seriously, please do a unsponsored review.
You deceived us...
Not a fan. Sorry!
Hand on Heart tasted like 2 buck chuck...very disappointed
Very disappointed , lost respect. I have tasted the hand on heart...they are indescribably wretched tasting. To even suggest they taste like wine is misinformation.
which one did you have? When did you have them? I didn't think they tasted bad as an alternative to wine for the price range they were in. We're comparing them with $15 wines which is definitely the value range.
I did think they were drinkable, although there was another brand in there also worth drinking.
A few months ago. Conducted a sampling of the wines to the public..and the feedback from all was "disgusting, awful, horrible, etc etc". Not drinkable.