The no-low science bit

Low and no-alcohol wines were once horrible parodies of the real thing. not any more, writes Jamie Goode.

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WINE ENJOYS A PRIVILEGED place at the table. When you go into a restaurant, the table will be set with wine glasses and you will be presented with a wine list. This almost universality of wine as the alcoholic drink to accompany food is a remarkable thing, and something the wine trade shouldn’t take for granted.

Cocktails, spirits, beers and mixed drinks don’t enjoy the same focus when it comes to sitting down to eat. Part of this is historical precedent, and part is because the flavours of wines seem to match very well with food.

Because of the primacy of wine as a food companion, there’s a market for alcohol-free wine for those who like the notion of wine with food, but who for one reason or another don’t want to consume alcohol. People want to enjoy the flavour of wine, with its dryness and complexity as well as its fruit flavours, without alcohol. Clearly, grape juice isn’t going to fit the bill – grape must before fermentation is incredibly sweet, with around 200g/litre of sugar (16g of sugar, when fermented, produces 1% of alcohol). And the process of fermentation adds many of the complex flavours that we love in wine, so alcohol-free wine will start life with at least some alcohol, which is then removed, in order to benefit from this complexity.

For a long time, non-alcoholic wines were mostly pretty horrible parodies of the real thing, and it’s largely for this reason that the category was static with less than 1% share of any market. This has now changed.

“There has been a remarkable surge in spontaneous demand from all over Europe,” says Anthony Dann, of Conetech, the company behind the spinning cone alcohol reduction technology. In the UK, for example, the ‘no-low’ market grew at most 8% by value and almost 6% by volume last year (Nielsen figures), and currently stands at £46m, with an average per-bottle selling price of £3.67.

Technically, the challenges of producing a wine with no alcohol are immense. This is because alcohol itself is a vital component of the flavour of a wine. This can be seen in what are known as ‘sweet spot’ tastings, where alcohol reduction technologies are used with wine. If you taste a wine, and then the same wine with varying degrees of alcohol reduction, the impact of alcohol on wine flavour becomes apparent, and it is quite marked. The wine will become more savoury (it will lose some of its fruit sweetness), and the acidity will appear more pronounced. It will lose body, too. So if you take alcohol away, then it’s necessary to do something to make up for this loss.

REMOVAL METHODS

There are a few ways of removing alcohol from wine. The least sophisticated is by vacuum evaporation or distillation – heating the wine in a vacuum to remove volatiles, including alcohol (in a vacuum their boiling point is reduced). Much better is membrane separation, utilising a form of filtration called cross-flow that works in a similar way to our kidneys. Here, the wine flows through filter columns tangentially to a membrane that has very fine pores, with water on the other side.

Normal filtration involves the wine being forced directly through a membrane, but this results in pores eventually clogging. With cross-flow, also known as reverse osmosis, it’s possible to remove the alcohol, along with some water and organic acids, but leave all the other flavour components in the wine.

The best technology for this, however, is spinning cone. In this process, a series of cones rotates rapidly, and this centrifugal force turns the wine into a film. In the first step, nitrogen is introduced and a fraction is taken off that consists of the aromatic molecules. Then the temperature is increased and the next fraction, which consists of mostly alcohol. The remaining de-alcoholised wine is then recombined with the aromatic fraction.

The spinning cone column, developed by Conetech, has been integral to the production of reduced alcohol wines, and also the no-low alcohol wines. “We have been very much involved in the creation of these products,” says Conetech’s Dann, “as our state-of-the-art technology for conservation of all the fragile aroma/flavour compounds is essential to the task.” He thinks good quality lower-alcohol wines can’t be achieved just in the vineyard, and that it represents a serious winemaking challenge. “Many wines are simply not suitable for ‘conversion’ to a reduced alcohol role. Counter-intuitively, ripe fruit with really good flavour development is essential (in spite of correspondingly high initial sugar and consequent alcohol), and so is planning for balance after the subtraction of alcohol. That means selecting and blending wines with relatively low phenolics so that the balancing effect of alcohol is not missed in the final product.”

But if producing good lower-alcohol wines is a challenge, making tasty no-low wines is even more tricky. “No matter what dealcoholisation method is used, the wine is so completely ‘gutted’ that some delicate reconstruction is called for,” says Dann.

The breakthrough for no-low alcohol wines came largely through the work of one company. Spanish giant Torres has achieved great success with its Natureo range. “The trend began almost 10 years ago with the launch of the first really delicious non-alcoholic wine brand, Natureo, from Miguel Torres,’ says Dann. As with other products of its kind, Natureo isn’t completely alcohol free (it’s technically very difficult to eliminate all alcohol) and so is labelled 0.5% alcohol, although the actual alcohol level will be lower. Dann thinks Natureo’s success – sales are now around the million case mark – stems from both using the spinning cone and also because Torres took the winemaking side seriously. “The project team – led by Mireia Torres Maczassek – worked for more than three years on the project,” says Christoph Kamuller of Torres. “The reason it took so long is because it’s not so easy to make a de-alcoholised wine.”

AROMA BALANCE

Kamuller adds: “In the case of de-alcoholised wine the equipment is extremely important, because by reducing alcohol the aroma balance is profoundly altered. People sometimes forget that ethanol is the second most important component in wine after water. Therefore we tested several de-alcoholisation methods. We found that the spinning cone column retained the maximum of the original organoleptic characteristics.” The success of Natureo has prompted other players to follow suit, such as Les Grands Chais de France and Zimmerman Graff, as well as many smaller producers. Conetech is providing services to many of them and says that the volume through its Spanish plant doubled in 2017 and looks set to double again in 2018.

Which markets are most responsive to these wines? “The Natureo wines are especially appreciated in the more mature markets – mostly northern Europe – where we have seen a trend for wines that have practically no alcohol,” says Kamuller. “These consumers probably think – just like we – that wine is the perfect companion with food and don’t want to give up on that. They all seem to realise that a de-alcoholised wine does not really compete with ‘normal’ wine – it competes with the alternatives you have, when you can’t drink ‘normal’ wine. For example, when you have to drive, your alternatives are water, juice, soft drinks and so on. With our Mediterranean roots we still think that the ideal match for good food is regular wine with alcohol. But when this is not possible, the de-alcoholised wines do a great job.”

LATEST TECHNOLOY

Another successful brand has been Rawson’s Retreat from Treasury Wine Estates in Australia. Winemaker Patrick Connors explains that the two wines, a Cabernet Sauvignon and Semillon/Chardonnay (both 0.5% alcohol) start life as the Rawson’s Retreat full-strength wines, which are then de-alcoholised using spinning cone technology. They are then de-acidified, because the acid has been concentrated in the process of removing the alcohol, as have colour and tannins. “Prior to de-alcoholising we, for example, start with 45,000 litres,” says Connors. “By the end of the process we only have approximately 33,000 litres remaining. The 12,000-litre variance is basically some of the natural water content and alcohol in grapes/wine but at an increased alcohol percentage, commonly referred to as ‘strip water’.

“The strip water is sent to another company and is distilled to make grape spirit, which is then used when fortifying our ports and sherries.” The final stage is to use some fining agents and grape juice concentrate to balance the acidity and sweetness of the final product. ‘The challenges are balancing the acid sugar levels as the de-alcing process concentrates all of the analytical compounds including acid and tannins in particular.”

Treasury’s Peter English reports that the wines are doing very well in the UK. “The Rawson’s range is listed in Tesco and we struggled to keep up for demand for a while. It’s also going into Asda from January.” He adds: “In terms of Europe, the majority of the European countries are seeing a decrease in alcohol consumption. The total average went down from 10.6 litres of pure alcohol per person between 2000-2005 to 9.8 litres between 2011 and 2016. Sweden is our biggest market for Rawsons where we are number one in the category with 13% share of volume.”

Another successful Australian no-low brand is Edenvale. “For non-intoxicating (0.5%abv) wines, the challenge is to deliver a real wine experience to consumers, by retaining flavours and the true varietal definition when the alcohol is removed,” says Michael Bright, director of Edenvale Wines. “Alcohol contributes significantly to the mouthfeel, bouquet, and flavour of wines, both red and white. Some of the aroma fractions in the grape varietal profile are closely aligned to that of alcohol, and you can lose some of these fractions when taking off the alcohol. The flavour contribution is replaced by trying to heighten the aromas and flavours that are retained once the alcohol is removed. Amplifying the varietal cues people associate with certain varietals and wine styles is critical.”

They have seen good growth of these wines in the traditional wine-drinking markets. “These markets are very accepting of alcohol-removed wines,” says Bright. Andrew Turner, director of wine for Eisberg Alcohol Free Wine (the UK’s largest no-lo brand), agrees. “The market for low and no-alcohol is thriving. Research shows that 21% of people in the UK are choosing not to drink at all and one in four are cutting down or taking a more moderate approach to drinking. As a result, consumers are increasingly on the lookout for quality alcohol-free options that don’t compromise on taste and fit the bill for any occasion.” So it seems that when these technically challenging wines are made well, there is a market for them. And it’s one that looks set to grow.