0% Chance
The ability to go out and not drink has become much easier over the past three years. Brands like Guinness, Heineken, and Corona are all putting out non-alcoholic offerings. What helps is that they are all good options. However in this boom there are bound to be products that hit the market that just don’t work, I’m sure the intentions behind them are all good but I don’t believe that everything needs, warrants, or should have a replacement. While beer has been very successfully brought into the 0% light, Spirits and Wine are both trailing in a significant way. I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom though, there are brands out there making some fantastic alternatives but overall it’s slim pickings.
The first (and most important) reason is necessity or the reason behind it. Beers fill this easily and brewers can get creative with flavours knowing people are going to try them as they have been for years before with alcoholic beer. Spirits aren’t so lucky, For most recognizable brands like Smirnoff or Captain Morgan the value of their product lies in the alcohol, without it it’s pretty much redundant. For the most part things like Vodka and Rum exist for their alcohol, granted the argument for Dark Rums flavours can be made but those can be replicated cheaply and probably in a tastier way without having to come with a brand name price tag. Where spirits will thrive is in the herbal and botanical avenues, I include gin here too. These products are special due to the flavour profiles being a major draw to their popularity, alcohol just happens to be there. Tanqueray and Gordons have already created passable 0% alternatives with Martini Vibrante and Floreale both adding options for 0% Aperitivo, these brands understand they have recognition and a flavour profile people want.
The second reason is brand recognition as I mentioned above. The brands most well-known for spirits will go into 0% becuase they have nothing to lose, if it fails they still have their original products. Where the struggle lies is with new brands only making 0%. A few brands have distiguished themselves as market leaders with Seedlip leading the way and ultimately being bought by Diagio. Dispite this success there are many more brands I feel will fall into obscurity due to lack of recognition. This means that people don’t know who is selling to them, creating scepticism and often putting people off buying, this issue is a major factor in what’s allowing 0% beer to boom and causing the other 0% to flop. Wine has been hit especially hard by this fact, a product already notoriously tricky to decipher and with so many different brands there are no real industry standouts that the general public may have an allegiance towards. You may be thinking now of Castello Del Diablo and Barefoot who are of course very recognisable but again these brands aren’t in it for the craft they are in it to make money. A major factor in these wines’ popularity is price, it’s cheap and alcoholic, so why would someone who’s looking for that bother with 0%? Additionally the margins on wine as cheap as barefoot are small and 0% production is an expensive process, again the value proposition is not there.
Finally, flavour. All the brands I’ve mentioned so far (apart from the Martini) lack a little. When making something without alcohol it’s truly a balancing act and a tricky one at that. Alcohol is a natural part of wine (and spirits), it makes up part of the body of the drink and without it, the whole thing can suffer. Imagine a tightrope walker with a big long balance stick, on each end are weights, if you remove one it’s going throw off the balance, the same can be said for drinks. 0% wine is made using a process called dealcoholisation where the wine has the alcohol stripped out of it through one of three processes. While these processes are effective at removing alcohol they also remove the balance at the same time, producers fight to fix that balance with additives (often sugar) but haven’t gotten it right yet. Sparkling wine has been more successful as the bubbles help to correct the balance, the best example of this can be found in French Bloom.
I know I’ve been extremely negative thus far and while that is true but I do believe these things can change. Like any industry innovation is inevitable and I look forward to tasting and recommending products that defy the points I’ve made here. I love to be proved wrong and believe that in time I may have to eat my hat, until then I shall remain honest about where you should spend your money and what is best left untouched for the time being.
