Save
Gluten-free, lactose-free, meat-free... In recent years, these terms have become a familiar part of the many restaurants’ routines. In a time of evolving dietary preferences, menus can have multiple versions to meet the individual requirements of each guest. But it’s becoming an increasing feature on wine lists as well as food menus. With more guests going sober or occasionally abstinent, alcohol-free wines are on the rise, and surging global sales of non-and-low-alcohol beverages are proof.
According to a report from UK-based data company IWSR, sales of beer, wine, and spirits that contain little or no alcohol will increase more than 30% by 2024 in countries such as Brazil, Canada, the US and Spain. But interest has grown fast enough in the last year that many wine producers see it as a burgeoning niche. Restaurants are creating pairings that include juices, infusions, kombucha and other options. But many customers still miss a glass of wine, the iconic drink that, over the centuries, has best served as an ally for gastronomic encounters.
Although the wine industry is betting on the promising segment of alcohol-free beverages by creating non-alcoholic products that are performing well in sales, for some people in the dining scene, the options available are still very limited. This is the case of sommelier Rubén Pol, from Disfrutar, a two-Michelin-star restaurant in Barcelona.
For Pol, replacing wine with soft drinks isn’t an option. “In addition to being limited, this kind of experience tends to be boring. Especially because many times other guests at the same table may be drinking wine and other alcoholic beverages, which could generate a sense of segregation to those who are not,” he points out.
Rubén Po, photo by: Joan Valera
Over the past year, with the extra time that the pandemic gave him, Pol began to study ways to remove alcohol from wines while maintaining their characteristic flavours and aromas — or organoleptic characteristics, as he puts it, in a vocabulary more familiar among sommeliers.
The process he developed at the restaurant follows the same methods used by many wineries producing non-alcoholic wines today. The alcohol is removed using vacuum distillation at the end of the process, so it doesn't result in a sweet drink akin to grape juice.
At Disfrutar, by doing some tests with a distillation machine called a Girovap — as common in fine-dining kitchens today as a Thermomix was a decade ago — Pol achieved some intriguing results. The equipment is widely used by cooks, not only for distillations but also to create extractions, clarifications, and low-temperature reductions. With some help from Oriol Castro, one of the restaurant’s three chefs and partners, Pol came up with a way to use it to remove all the alcohol in beverages.
Girovap in action.
At first, some wines turned out to be insipid, losing their main aromas. But by controlling the temperature (consistently low) and time (no more than 15-17 minutes), he could finally taste some exciting wines after removing their alcohol — which he proudly displays in small transparent bottles next to the wines. At a dinner, a guest can avoid consuming up to 100 ml of alcohol withdrawn through the Girovap.
The process does not result in zero alcohol, he warns. Still, he guarantees that the percentages are so low that they have no impact on reducing reflexes or decision-making, for example. They can be consumed by people who are driving or by those who avoid alcohol for religious reasons, in most cases. People with addiction problems, however, should avoid them.
The process of measuring the amount of alcohol present in wine.
The tests led Pol and Castro to try to explore the non-alcoholic possibilities of the bottles they usually serve in Disfrutar’s conventional wine service: from acclaimed sherry wines to the most famous French reds. "The ones that offered the best results are the complex wines, preferably aged, which preserve their essence and still remain balanced,” says Pol.
The method is carried out with an almost scientific rigour: the beverages are tasted before going through the alcohol removal process. A notebook contains all the information from the analysis. In the case of a beer from Balardin, an Italian brewery, the following notes: "we noticed a loss in volume, preservation of texture and reduction in flavour.” For a sweet wine from the Clos Figueras bodega in the Priorato region, the annotations say: "It has slightly decreased the aromatic intensity, but preserved the notes of red fruits and spices.”
By testing dozens of bottles, they also concluded that red wines tend to do better than white ones. In the case of reds, the more aromatic and lighter bodied wines (without ageing in oak barrels) end up losing some of their important characteristics. It’s hardly surprising, since alcohol is a volatile compound, which greatly helps wines to better release their aromas. It also contributes to the body and texture of a beverage. Removing the alcohol from a wine is like removing a crucial ingredient from a recipe — it can turn out good, but it will not be the same.
Red, white, and sherry wines, as well as beers and some sakes, have already been served to customers at Disfrutar in recent months. The challenge now is to adapt a sparkling wine in the restaurant's laboratory to see its results. All the non-alcoholic wines at Disfrutar come from conventional production from different wineries worldwide. Pol and his team remove the alcohol and then put the processed liquid in bottles that they present to the guests with a new label created and printed in the restaurant. "We include all the information about the region, grapes, and producers. But as we modify the original wine, we thought it would be better to serve them in customised bottles," he explains.
Experiments in removing alcohol from wine for dining purposes aren’t new. In 2016, for example, Josep Roca, from acclaimed El Celler de Can Roca, teamed up with chemist Pere Castells to reduce the graduation of different wines he used to serve at his 3-Michelin restaurant - with excellent results.
Back at Disfrutar, guests have approved the experience. "There are many people with intolerance, who are allergic to alcohol or who do not consume it for reasons of religion or well-being. What we want is to provide a wine experience as similar to the conventional one as possible, so that these people can enjoy the best the restaurant can offer,” says Castro.
There is still controversy over how much this process can change a wine — could it remove its very essence? Kill wine’s spirit, so to speak? The primary senses of nature and purity can be profoundly altered in an alcohol-free bottle.
Even so, the Disfrutar team argues that it is all about creating new products that can offer a more inclusive experience at the table. For Castro, we live in a society adapting more and more to the particularities and tastes of each person — and this also applies to the fine-dining scene. "If we can adapt an entire menu to serve a top-notch experience for a vegetarian guest without using any animal-based ingredient, why can't we do something similar for those who don't or can't drink alcohol?”
