On “Wine”
Also known as: Alcohol-Free "Wine" That Isn't Really Wine But Is Drunk Like Wine and, Well, Sure, We Can Call It Wine!
Should we be trying to make alcohol-free wine? This is a question I posed about gin (and essentially alcohol-free spirits, in general) in April's paid newsletter, and the same can be asked of wine: It relies on alcohol in order to become what it is, so are we setting ourselves up for failure by trying to make a beverage with that essential piece removed?
"It seems counterintuitive to take a delicious wine and then strip the alcohol out of it," says Kyle Connaughton, owner of SingleThread in Healdsburg, California. "You're manipulating someone else's hard work and artistry to create something that was not the intent." Connaughton sees a place for dealcoholized wine, and he understands that the products have improved along with distillation technology over the past few years—a topic I'll get into in more detail soon—but SingleThread's beverage team takes a different approach. He explains below.
First, the context: At some point along each of its tasting-menu dinners, SingleThread serves a main course that's meant to highlight the glass of Sonoma County Pinot Noir with which it's paired (not the other way around, as is the case in most restaurants). Here's Connaughton on the nonalcoholic pairing:
"It’s not nonalcoholic wine, but we are trying to give you the characteristic profile of Sonoma County Pinot Noir, so we decided to build it from the ground up. We've called it somm-bucha internally because it's kombucha-based.
Various people who have been part of the beverage program have found their creative ways to riff on it over time, but historically it has always had a beet component, which gives earthiness, color, and viscosity. Big fruit flavors are typical of our wines here as compared to Pinot Noir from Burgundy, so we use fresh, jammy red and black berries rather than dried fruits. Black tea has been typical for its tactile functions. Something else that gives the drinks some tannic edge are the fruit skins, so we use the whole berries rather than just the juice, and we maybe crush and muddle some of the seeds. For salinity, we use liquid shio koji.
That's what fun: When we talk about salinity in wine, it's just a perception of salinity, but we can add actual salinity to nonalcoholic beverages if we want. And you don't have umami in wine, but you can put that in nonalcoholic beverages using, say, dried mushrooms. Just like in creating dishes, you have more freedom and flexibility."
For the past year, I’ve been combing the world for nonalcoholic beverage producers taking similar approaches to SingleThread. Here are snapshots of six such brands.
Based in: Schlat, Germany
Made by: Jörg Geiger, a producer deeply tied to the Swabian region and who is working hard to preserve its orchard fruits
The approach: Geiger has been making nonalcoholic beverages that reflect the character and complexity of the heritage apples and pears that grow near his home in Schlat, Germany for 17 years. In other words, his wine-like "Inspirations" and “Cuvées," which he labels "PriSecco" are terroir-driven; they are combinations of fruits, herbs, spices, and even the pressings of leaves and branches found in Swabia’s unique ecosystem.
To buy: Exclusively at delmosa.com
A little more: Get to know Delmosa founder Bruce Blosil here.
Based in: London, England
Made by: Wine writer Matthew Jukes and a team of chefs, including Melania Borgia, who heads up production. (Jukes’ friend, former Wall Street banker Jack Hollihan, is his business partner.)
The approach: When Jukes sat down to design a nonalcoholic beverage he could pair with food, he turned to history, finding a centuries-old recipe for Haymaker's Punch. “It was all the bruised bits, all the knobbly bits, all the skin bits—all the bits of fruit and veg you don't eat—macerated in apple cider vinegar,” he told me. “I thought, It wouldn't spoil in the sunshine because it's full of vinegar, it’s refreshing and dry if you get the balance of the honey and the vinegar right, and it’s mega-sustainable because you’re using stuff that was going to be thrown away. I thought it was marvelous.” That was the starting point, followed by lots of research and development: Jukes made single-note versions, pushing back the flavors he liked and pulling forward those he did, and then he blended them, changed the vinegars, played with temperature-control… “It took an awfully long time to come up with a flavor that I would want to put my name on,” he said. Bear in mind, nine million people read him every weekend.
From what I can tell, a standout feature of Jukes is the use of vegetable juice. I’ll let Mr. Jukes himself explain: "I love what I call ‘anti-fruit.’ Fruit flavors are obvious; anti-fruits are the complex flavors that allow the fruit to shine, basically vegetables, spices, and herbs. Like makeup, they highlight certain features. Apple cider vinegar gives you this amazing washing line along which you can hang all these flavors—and it's mind-blowing length, longer than most wines—and then I just use a lot of fruit and anti-fruit.”
To buy: jukescordialities.com. In the States, you can currently access Jukes 1, which is modeled after Chardonnay and Viognier ("your serious main-course whites"); black-fruited Jukes 6, which is akin to Cabernet or Syrah; and Jukes 8, meant to mimic a Provence-style rosé. Each one-ounce bottle is meant to serve two after being diluted with water.
A little more: One of Jukes’ clients is “the most famous old lady in England,” he says. Wink!
Based in: Toronto, Canada, although the makers will soon relocate to a larger facility in Guelph, a smaller city in Ontario
Made by: Acid League—co-founders include food scientists Cole Pearsall and Allan Mai as well as entrepreneur Scott Friedmann—with the help of winemaker Devin Campbell, who recently became the company’s full-time head of beverage production. Acid League's creative director Rae Drake is also a wine pro. (This company is moving fast, by the way: Acid League launched with vinegars in August 2020 and started making 300 bottles of each Wine Proxy in January 2021. Now they’re making over 2,000 bottles per Proxy.)
The approach: So far, I believe there have been 30 Wine Proxies total. Sometimes there’s a wine varietal in mind when making Proxies and sometimes not, but, with each bottle, Campbell does want to stay true to wine in terms of its tannin structure, mouthfeel, and acid profile. "If you have those components, then you can live outside of the scope of wine," he says. "You can have all of these different flavor profiles you would never find in wine, which is bound by the grape. (At the end of the day, you're only going to get certain flavors coming out of a grape.)"
Generally, Campbell’s approach is to layer blends of juices with teas and other infusions, spices, and house-made bitters. To look at a specific example: For Night Shade, which is meant to convey “Tuscany as day turns to night,” he started with Sangiovese grape juice as well as concentrated forms of cranberry and cherry juices. Then, he brought in Korean black tea for “that kind of rustic tannin profile,” Rooibus tea, “which is very earthy and woody,” kombu, which Campbell says deepens the flavor of the other components and also brings a savory quality, olive leaves, a homemade sun-dried tomato vinegar, and paprika, among other ingredients.
To buy: acidleague.com
A little more: Every month, the team produces three new flavors. (It’s wildly ambitious! That’s three weeks from idea to ingredient sourcing to recipe development to production, leaving another week for creating original labels, marketing, etc. Even after talking with them, I don’t know how exactly they accomplish this feat.) That essentially makes each a limited-edition product, though I’m told that, at some point, a set of core flavors will available for purchase any time.
Based in: Melbourne, Australia
Made by: Founder Aaron Trotman, an entrepreneur, has hired a team of culinary professionals including a distiller, brewer, chef, food scientist, and star bartender Nick Cozens.
The approach: While NON is meant to be drunk like wine, its makers aren't trying to mimic particular varietals, and, similarly to Campbell, they feel that this approach means that there are no limitations. The next edition, for example, contains coffee, cherries, pink peppercorn, and garam masala (!).
Verjus, the juice of unripened wine grapes, is in all six products. "The beauty of verjus is that it gives you acidity and a great profile, but it also adds viscosity to your drink,” says Trotman. "It coats the palate as well." Otherwise, it's all about cooking. "Right now, we've got a ton of pears in a 20-tray combi oven, and I think it's going to take four days of constant roasting to get the right caramelized pear flavor," says Trotman. "So, the prep is laborious. And it's prep, you know? It's run like a kitchen."
To buy: non.world or, for a less painful shipping cost, drinknolow.com
A little more: The seventh flavor of NON is out soon, and number eight will be out by the end of the year.
Based in: Oslo, Norway
Made by: Christian Stray-Jansen, who founded premium nonalcoholic drinks import company Leske in early 2016, along with two partners (and some food scientists)
The approach: Verjus is key to the white wine-inspired product called Act Naturally, which also contains sea buckthorn, gooseberries, chamomile tea, sea salt, and Cascade hops. The red wine alternative, Real Fantasy, is made of blackberries, sour cherries, aronia berries, roasted oak, Assam tea, lavender blossoms, red wine vinegar, rose petals, star anise, and juniper. (Phew!)
To buy: In the States? We can’t yet! Boo.
A little more: Ambijus' first product, Clearly Confused, is more akin to cider than wine and contains fermented apples, spruce needles, oakwood, elderflower, apple cider vinegar, and apple blossoms. (At one point, it contained cloudberries, also called Nordic berries, but they grow wild and are hard to find, so something tells me the updated formula doesn't include them.) The vibe? Stray-Jansen says he wanted "to bottle the Nordic forest.”
Based in: Oslo, Norway
Made by: Co-founders Anna Karenina Anda Barron, a graphic designer, and Christer Andersson, a former DJ
The approach: Like many of the others listed above, these products contain teas, botanical infusions, fermented fruits, and homemade vinegars, but unlike the others, the base here is kombucha. So far, I've had the Iridescent Moonbrew, which Anda Barron and Andersson make from their proprietary blend of sencha, jasmine, Yerba mate, and oolong teas, but they pasteurize the resulting kombucha to make it shelf-stable. On top of that, they add fermented nectarines, apricot vinegar, elderflower, orange peels, and sea salt. There are two other products: Woodland Honey Wine, meant to taste like pine-infused mead, and Ficus Honey Wine, a figgy, gingery take.
To buy: Exclusively at drinknolow.com
A little more: Anda Barron and Andersson also brew straight kombucha, but only for the Norwegian market. (It's a raw product, so the shelf life is shorter and it's harder to ship.)
Some personal news:
The Washington Post published a piece I wrote about verjus last week online: “Why verjus has become the darling of nonalcoholic-drink makers.” It will be in print in a couple weeks, I’m told.
Truly humbled to share that I was named one of Food & Wine magazine’s 25 first annual Game Changers for being “a pivotal voice” in normalizing alcohol-free drinks and drinking culture. Read more about it all in the July 2021 “Innovation Issue” of Food & Wine, on newsstands now, as well as on foodandwine.com.
I am accepting the Research Society on Alcoholism's 2021 Media Award at a virtual ceremony next week, and I’m nervous! But honored. Here’s how the board explained my nomination: "We want to recognize you for your journalistic efforts in interpreting and integrating information related to alcohol, through presentation of available national statistics on alcohol consumption and empirically-based alcohol research findings. Presenting this information to the public in a light and engaging, scientifically accurate manner, opens up important conversations about alcohol, including potential related harms of use. Your approach and courage in speaking out about your personal experiences in relation to your journalistic efforts is inspiring. Your efforts will certainly help reduce stigma around being alcohol-free." <3
Fantastic as always, Julia. Truly sorry ya the work you’re doing!