(Manfred Klimek / Editorial team / animated pic: runwayml
Anyone who claims today that German or Austrian society has become stagnant receives a contradiction from an unexpected source: the wine industry. Not from start-ups, not from universities, not from ministries. But from cultural farmers, the vintners’ cultural farming community, who expand the word culture to include innovation.
This week, I have been working on a larger investigation into alcohol-free and reduced-alcohol wines, which will soon appear as an article in WELT am SONNTAG. I expected plenty of marketing, a few half-baked experiments and lots of bad temper. What I found was something entirely different: an industry moving faster than its reputation.
That is surprising. For years, wine was regarded as a counter-movement to technologisation. While other food industries developed ever new processes, winegrowing celebrated the return to the original. Spontaneous fermentation instead of cultured yeast. Amphora instead of stainless steel. Horse instead of tractor. The less visible the technology became, the greater the longing seemed to be among many consumers.
Now something remarkable is happening. Technology is returning. And not as an enemy, but as a solution.
Vintners such as Hannes Sabathi in Southern Styria, Johannes Leitz in the Rheingau, Christoph Hammel in the Palatinate, Gregory Emmel with Haardt Hills, and even the more classically oriented Richter winery on the Moselle are now also engaging intensively with alcohol-free wines. Not with the often somewhat perplexed proxies that merely seek to replace wine, but with actual wine from which the alcohol is removed again after fermentation. Just a few years ago, the result was often unsatisfactory. The wines seemed thin, empty and unfinished. It was understandable why many wine drinkers mocked the category.
In the meantime, however, something has happened. The processes have improved. Cellar technology has become more precise. The sensory results are more convincing. Above all, however, a new category has emerged between the worlds: partially de-alcoholised wines. Often supplemented with verjus, the juice of unripe grapes. The best examples still possess the origin, fruit and structure of a wine, but do without some of that alcoholic force which many young consumers are increasingly viewing with scepticism today.
This is precisely where the social paradox begins. The same generation that views technology critically in many areas of life suddenly demands it from wine. It questions industrial processes and wants to consume regionally, sustainably and consciously – but at the same time calls for drinks with less alcohol, more control and greater suitability for everyday life. Without technology, that would be impossible.
The wine industry is responding to this with remarkable pragmatism. While large sections of society become paralysed in debates, vintners experiment. They try things out, discard them, improve them and start again. That is precisely what the wine industry has always done. Even the methods revered today as traditional were once innovations. The important point, however, is that with these experiments the vintners are by no means abandoning the organic or biodynamic paths already taken in the vineyard. The chemical sledgehammer will not make a comeback there.
The debate about alcohol-free wine is often conducted with unnecessary ideological fervour. For some, it is a betrayal of a cultural technique thousands of years old. For others, it is the only morally acceptable future. Neither view is particularly convincing. The most exciting producers have long been pursuing a different approach. They do not want to replace classic wine. They want to complement it. The 12.5% Riesling does not disappear. Nor does the 13.5% Blaufränkisch. But a new space is currently emerging between mineral water and Spätburgunder. A space for people who want to drink less alcohol without giving up wine.
For decades, the wine industry was forced to defend itself against accusations of backwardness. Today, this very industry is showing how adaptation can work without abandoning its own identity. And perhaps this also marks the end of the proxies’ brief career. For why should anyone drink a beverage that merely imitates wine when vintners are now learning to produce alcohol-free wine convincingly themselves? The future of alcohol-free enjoyment could therefore emerge precisely where many would have least expected it: in the wine cellar.
The wine industry has long since set out on its journey.