Go low or no-go? Why is no-alcohol wine a tougher sell than zero beer?

Sunday, 5 July 2026

Low- and zero-alc beers have taken off, so why are worry-free wines harder to find? By Nikki Macdonald.

Temperance is back, in hipster clothing.

Even as Kiwis drink less, one section of the supermarket beer and wine aisle just keeps growing - low-alcohol offerings.

Practically every craft brewery has a low or zero-alcohol brew, and many are remarkably drinkable. Crack a couple of cans at a BBQ and you can still get a dose of hoppy happiness without the drunk-in-charge angst.

But worry-free wine seems harder to nail, with fewer Kiwi companies making non-alcoholic wines. And the reviews are mixed, to be kind. At best, they’re thin but passable substitutes for the real deal, at worst they’re grape juice with a side of vinegar.

So why is alcohol-free wine so much harder to perfect? And is anyone winning?

Low, no, no-go?

Kiwi vintners were arguably ahead of the game in 2014, when NZ Winegrowers launched a $17 million, seven-year project to research ways to make wines with naturally lower alcohol levels.

They developed techniques to pare back the vine leaves to reduce photosynthesis, allowing the grapes to ripen to full flavour, but with lower sugars. It’s the sugar that ferments to alcohol, so that naturally produces a drink that is still every bit a wine by process and taste, just with less alcohol (less than 10%, instead of the usual 12.5% or more)

But then temperance got a trendy makeover, and drinkers started demanding low or zero-alc drinks.

Beer had a head-start, argues NZ Winegrowers GM of brand Charlotte Read. In 2017, while winemakers were still scouting lower-alcohol viticulture hacks, Heineken launched a zero-alcohol beer.

Non-alcoholic wine, though, is also just harder to perfect, Read says. For starters, there’s more alcohol to remove, with most wines sitting at more than double the strength of a basic beer.

And while beer has hops and fizz to boost its body and flavour, wine relies on alcohol for more than just its warm fuzzy feelings.

“Wine is a more complex product, when you don’t have the alcohol playing that important role in texture and flavour and mouth-feel,” Read says.

That said, there are Kiwi wine brands making inroads, selling a million cases of lower alcohol wine - equivalent to our sixth biggest export market.

In our largest export destination, the United States, non-alcoholic wine makes up about 0.3% of all wine sales, while non-alc beer is 1% of all beer. So if zero-alcohol wine is on the same trajectory, that’s a lot of potential growth, Read says.

She counts just six Kiwi wineries currently making no-alcohol wines, and about a dozen with reduced-alcohol offerings. While the major players are represented, it’s a harder market for smaller wineries to get into, she says.

That’s because of how low-alcohol wines are made. To produce something that doesn’t just taste like grape juice, you have to complete the normal winemaking process, and then remove the alcohol.

You can do that with vacuum distilling to evaporate off the alcohol at a lower temperature; by filtering out the alcohol with a reverse osmosis membrane; or with spinning cones that separate out the wine’s elements.

“The technology to remove alcohol from wine - it’s pretty expensive kit,” Read says. “So it’s not something that a small boutique winery would easily be able to get into.

“Right now, with the US having tariffs applied, the fuel crisis and with all these different costs in the chain - bottles go up, screw caps go up, those sorts of things stifle innovation.”

One winery that has gone big on zero-alc wines is Marlborough’s Giesen. It invested in a spinning cone column to split out the alcohol, so the wine can be built back without it. Foot-stomping grapes and musty barrels it certainly is not.

As chief winemaker Jeremy Tod explains it, the base wine is put through the column, which contains inverted cones, half of which spin, and half of which don’t.

The first pass captures the wine’s aromatic compounds. (Think mown grass or Moroccan leather). That’s done in a vacuum to reduce the temperature at which the aromas vaporise, so they’re not damaged by heat.

The second pass removes the alcohol (which is turned into a grape spirit by Strange Nature Gin).

And then comes the real alchemy - rebuilding it into something that tastes like traditional wine. Some of the aroma is added back into the alcohol-removed wine, and concentrated grape juice is added to balance the flavour.

“The important note here is that to make a 0% wine, you need to have first made a good full-strength wine (base),” Tod says.

Giesen made the first zero-alcohol version of New Zealand’s celebrated Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc in 2020, and it’s now the biggest premium non-alcoholic wine brand in the United States.

It now has a specialised non-alc team, and is continually refining the process, Tod says.

Sparkling zeros tend to work better than still wines, as bubbles add texture. But they’ve also had good success with barrel fermented chardonnay, which won the best white wine at last year’s World Alcohol Free Awards.

“Making 0% wine takes technology, wine-making and viticulture experience, along with a genuine commitment to the category,” Tod says.

Is it even still wine?

Michael Cooper is unmoved. If you like low or no-alcohol wine by all means drink it, says the veteran wine writer. He, however, does not.

“The reality is that it tastes completely different without the alcohol. You cannot underestimate the crucial contribution that alcohol makes to our sensory enjoyment of the wine, because the alcohol imparts hints of sweetness and bitterness, and it has a critical impact on the texture of the wine, or what people tend to describe as being mouth-feel.

“So a wine without alcohol or a low level tastes light in your mouth, whereas one with a normal level of alcohol, the wine is more sturdy, and it's got sort of more satisfying richness and roundness.

“A wine not having alcohol to me is like the All Blacks not having any New Zealanders; a meat pie with no meat.”

Non-alcoholic wines can also taste overly sweet, as the grapes are often picked earlier, when they’re more acidic, so that has to be balanced with more grape sugars, Cooper says.

It’s also technically not wine, according to the International Organisation of Vine and Wine, which prescribes a minimum alcohol level of 8.5%.

“I can’t see the point in drinking something that has essentially unattractive flavours, and you’re paying about $15 to $20 for it. If it tastes like apple juice, you may as well buy the apple juice.”

While he acknowledges he’s not the target market, he does drink low-alcohol beer.

“I think it works better for beer than it does for wine.”

His suggestion for those looking to reduce their alcohol intake is to drink the wine you like, but less of it. (While that doesn’t work for teetotallers, about 80% of low-alcohol wine drinkers also drink the full-noise version, just on different occasions.)

Or go for a wine that is traditionally made, but with a naturally lower alcohol level, Cooper says. Germany and Austria have long made lower-alcohol rieslings, at 8% or 9%.

“They're crisp, they're slightly sweet, they're light, but the flavours are attractive.”

He also rates The Doctors’ 9.5% Sauvignon Blanc, by Marlborough’s Forrest Estate, whose lower alcohol content is achieved solely by changing how the grapes are grown.

Giesen’s Tod says it’s fair to ask if zero-alcohol wine still really counts as wine. He reckons it does.

“The vineyard, the fruit, the varietal character and the wine-making all come before the alcohol is removed.

“Of course, removing alcohol changes the structure of the wine. Alcohol contributes body, texture, aromatic lift and balance, so there is additional craft involved in building that back in a way that still feels like wine in the glass.

“For us, 0% wine is an evolution of wine — not a replacement for traditional wine, but a new choice for the way people are drinking today.”