(Manfred Klimek, text & photo)
The wine industry suddenly has a future again, one that few people could have imagined possible just a few months ago. It is precisely the technology that many winegrowers quite rightly viewed with scepticism for a long time that is opening up what may be the industry's greatest opportunity since the introduction of temperature-controlled fermentation. This is not about dealcoholisation itself. It is about the new generation of equipment for recovering aromas. What once often tasted like insipid grape juice with little ambition now has fragrance, structure and that inner logic that makes wine wine. The alcohol is removed from the wine. Its volatile aromas, however, are captured and then returned to it. That sounds technical. It is technical. In reality, though, it is currently changing the wine industry. For the first time, alongside classic wine, there is no longer merely a substitute world, but a second wine world.
Over the years, a parallel culture has grown up around proxies: tea, herbs, fermentations, essences and spices were supposed to replace what wine allegedly could no longer provide. Many of these drinks taste excellent. It is just that they have nothing to do with wine. They constitute a separate drinks category. The wine industry had to watch as the very restaurant sector that had been shaped by wine for decades suddenly began experimenting with and serving alternatives. Now the situation is changing fundamentally. If non-alcoholic wine moves ever closer to classic wine in aromatic terms, if sommeliers integrate it into menus as a matter of course and guests order it no longer out of abstinence but out of conviction, the proxy world loses part of its previous unique selling point. Wine is beginning to close the gap itself, the one that other drinks had occupied in the meantime.
What is astonishing about this is less the technology than the reaction of many winegrowers. Some still view this development with scepticism. They regard dealcoholised wines as a sideshow or even as a threat to the traditional understanding of wine. They may regret that in a few years' time. For no one is demanding that traditional wine be replaced. It is about expanding it. The wine industry has always been at its strongest when it allowed for diversity. New grape varieties, new cellar technology and biodynamic winegrowing were almost always initially viewed with suspicion. Today, they are a natural part of the offering of many wineries and the hospitality sector. Why should it be any different for non-alcoholic or low-alcohol wines?
This is precisely where an economic opportunity emerges that seems remarkably logical. Non-alcoholic wines naturally do not have the same ageing potential as classic wines. Alcohol preserves. Its absence changes the wine's development in the bottle. These wines are intended to be drunk young; they have to be drunk young. Yet that is not a weakness, but a category of its own. No one expects a fresh, simple Sauvignon Blanc to mature for twenty years. Why should we expect that of a dealcoholised wine? A modern winery in 2027 could therefore offer three worlds at the same time: fresh non-alcoholic wines for aperitifs, lunch, accompanying starters or the bar; young lower-alcohol white wines for conscious drinkers; and alongside them, mature great Rieslings, Burgundies or classic red wines for those moments when wine may still remain precisely what it has been for centuries. One takes nothing away from the other. On the contrary. The individual categories strengthen one another.
Fine-dining restaurants in particular are already beginning to understand this. A menu no longer has to be accompanied by steadily rising alcohol levels. Why not non-alcoholic Riesling with the first course, an elegant white wine at eleven per cent alcohol by volume with the fish, and a mature Pinot Noir or Blaufränkisch with the main course? This does not make wine smaller. It makes it broader. The real challenge therefore lies neither in the technology nor in the quality, but in the mindset. The wine industry must overcome the reservations it has developed towards its own future. Technology has by now moved further ahead than some of the debate. It is opening up possibilities that seemed unimaginable just a few years ago.
The real question, therefore, is no longer whether non-alcoholic and low-alcohol wines will become part of the wine industry. They already are. The only question now is which wineries have the courage to help shape this new wine world in good time. For one thing has by now become impossible to overlook: simply carrying on as before is the riskiest decision of all.