Go to any bottle shop these days and you’re bound to be greeted by a respectable section devoted to non-alcoholic offerings. Beer has arguably pulled off the NA feat best, cracking the zero proof code and producing genuinely drinkable options that resemble real styles. The spirits realm is currently trying and, here and there, pulling off wins. But what of wine?
Making a good non-alcoholic wine was never going to be easy. It’s the beverage we tend to fuss over most, shrouded in ritual and tradition. That, and there’s a one-two punch of complexity and mouthfeel in good wine that’s very hard to hang onto after you remove the alcohol. Keep in mind that, while the technology is ever-improving, the act of rubbing the alcohol out of the wine is a highly interventionist move in an industry that usually champions, well, the opposite.
So when I received an email titled “The Quest for NA’s Best Grape Varietal,” I winced a little. Maybe it’s because I was raised on Pinot Noir and revere nuance. Maybe it’s because I’ve yet to taste a non-alcoholic wine that I liked enough to seek out after the bottle was gone (or poured down the drain). But craft beer didn’t pull off the miracle overnight and we probably shouldn’t expect the same from wine. So how do wine producers go about crafting NA wines, and are we overthinking them?
The Quest
Catherine Diao and Dorothy Munholland started Studio Null in 2021. The duo sources fruit from
