Australian Non Alcoholic Wines
Non-Alcoholic wines are gaining interest and popularity and as result many more are now available. There are many advantages, not least to your liver and ability to drive home safely. First is that they can be cheap since there are no alcohol taxes imposed. Most bottles are in the AUD10-15 range. Second, is that since a non-alcoholic wine is considered a standard type of drink it must must local food labeling standards and disclose a full list of ingredients, calorific values, and quantities. I only wish that ordinary wine would do likewise.
The downside is that quality is very patchy because some products are labelled wine and come in a wine bottle but by no pother measure is it a wine at all. And many non-alcoholic wines simply taste bad. This isn’t snobbery talking here. This isn’t the sommelier’s expectation of a thousand subtle flavours coming through. Instead is my experience that many non-alcoholic, or more specifically many de-alcoholised wines taste like wet cardboard – horrible. While this might be due to bad ingredients, though I doubt it, I suspect it is more to do with the production process. Many of the wines that have avoided the wet cardboard have done so by masking (?) it with sugar, so many are off-dry wines, or or sweet. So, white and sparking wines fare better, and reds worse.
Best Sparking Non-Alcoholic Wines
- (=1) Plus and Minus blanc de blancs
- (=1) McGuigan Zero Sparking
- (2) Edenvale Premium blance de blancs
Best Whites
- (=1) Plus and Minus pinot grigio (dry)
- (=1) McGuigan Zero Chardonnay (off-dry)
Best Reds
When I have drinkable one, I’ll let you know!