There was a time when non-alcoholic wine sounded like a punishment. Today something more interesting is happening: a growing number of serious producers are not trying to make juice that looks like wine. They make the wine first. Then they remove the alcohol.
That distinction matters.
A proper dealcoholised wine begins where ordinary wine begins: grapes are harvested, processed and fermented. Yeasts convert sugars into alcohol, and in the process a large number of aromatic compounds are produced that give wine its character. Only after that comes the additional step — the alcohol is removed.
That is why a good 0.0 bottle is not the same as grape juice in a wine glass. It has been through vinification. It had alcohol. It had the structure of wine. The challenge is to preserve as much of that structure as possible after removing one of the most important components.
And alcohol in wine does far more than make us drunk.
Ethanol carries aroma, gives the wine body and changes the perception of sweetness, acidity and warmth in the mouth. Remove it and wine can become thin, overly acidic or simply hollow. For decades that was the central problem with most non-alcoholic wines: technically they were wine, but the experience was not especially convincing.
A new generation of producers has begun treating dealcoholisation as part of winemaking, not as an operation performed at the end on any given bottle.
One of the finest examples is Berlin-based KOLONNE NULL. They work with wineries on the selection and development of base wines, which then pass through dealcoholisation in their own laboratory. They use vacuum distillation: when pressure is reduced, the boiling point of alcohol drops, so ethanol can be separated at around 30°C rather than exposing the wine to the temperatures of conventional distillation. This is followed by aroma recovery and final wine adjustment.
The same fundamental logic is used by the German producer Leitz for its EINS-ZWEI-ZERO line. Their Riesling is first made as wine, and then the alcohol is removed by vacuum distillation at approximately 29°C. The goal is not to produce a copy of grape juice, but to preserve the variety's character, acidity and the aromas of the base wine as far as technology permits.
That does not mean a 0.0 wine tastes exactly the same as a wine with alcohol.
It does not, and there is no reason to pretend it does. Alcohol provides structure and body that are difficult to fully replace. Even Leitz, in its description of EINS-ZWEI-ZERO, openly states that the dealcoholised wine does not have quite the same depth, structure and weight as its alcoholic counterpart. The more interesting question is therefore not "can we fool someone into not noticing the difference?" but "can we make a complex, dry, gastronomic drink that we actually want even when alcohol is not the point?"
Increasingly the answer is yes.
That is where a new category emerges — one far more interesting to us than the old idea of a "substitute." A person need not be a driver, pregnant, on medication or fully sober to order a 0.0 wine. They may be having lunch at two in the afternoon and need to work afterwards. They may want a second glass without a second hit of alcohol. They may be training early tomorrow. They may simply feel like wine, but not ethanol.
That is a small but important shift in drinking culture: alcohol no longer has to automatically come packaged with an adult flavour.
There is also a health dimension worth stating without wellness drama. Alcohol is not a health ingredient in wine. The World Health Organization and major public health institutions have been very clear in recent years that alcohol carries health risks and that, when it comes to cancer risk, there is no quantity that can be declared completely safe. That does not mean a glass of wine automatically creates a health problem; it means there is not much case left for drinking wine for health reasons.
When alcohol is removed, a large portion of its caloric value is removed with it. Ethanol delivers around 7 kcal per gram, so dealcoholised wines often have significantly fewer calories than standard wine. KOLONNE NULL, for example, shows around 13–17 kcal per 100 ml across many of its current 0.0 labels; Studio Italiano Pinot Grigio has 19 kcal per 100 ml. Exact figures naturally depend on the bottle and its residual sugar.
But there is no need to make a new religion out of this either.
Non-alcoholic does not automatically mean sugar-free. When alcohol is removed, producers must rebalance body, acidity and aroma, and some wines carry added or residual sugar. EINS-ZWEI-ZERO Riesling, for instance, has around 5.1 g of sugar per 100 ml according to its technical sheet, while many current KOLONNE NULL labels sit at around 2.3–3.4 g. The label is more useful than the assumption that every 0.0 wine has the same nutritional profile.
And one more small terminological trap: "alcohol-free" does not mean 0.000% everywhere.
Some dealcoholised products may retain traces of alcohol within the limits the law permits for that category. KOLONNE NULL states that the majority of its range is 0.0%, while certain labels remain below 0.5%; Studio Italiano is 0.0%. Leitz lists minimal traces below 0.1% for EINS-ZWEI-ZERO. If absolute zero matters to you for medical, religious or other reasons, check the specific bottle, not just the shelf it is sitting on.
We find the entire category interesting for an even simpler reason: good food deserves an adult drink even when we do not want alcohol.
At VERA we did not want the non-alcoholic option to be a footnote at the bottom of the menu. We select labels from producers who treat the idea of wine without alcohol seriously: KOLONNE NULL, Studio Italiano and EINS-ZWEI-ZERO. They differ in style and origin, but they share the conviction that 0.0 should not mean giving up acidity, aroma, structure and the ritual of a wine glass.
We also have a non-alcoholic Aperol Spritz, because the same logic applies to aperitivo. Sometimes we want ice, orange, bitterness, bubbles and that first afternoon glass that signals the working part of the day is done. Alcohol is only one part of that ritual, not the entire ritual.
Perhaps that is exactly where the most interesting future of the 0.0 category lies.
Non-alcoholic wine has long been sold to people who cannot drink. The new generation is speaking to people who this evening simply choose not to.
That is a much larger audience.
And, more importantly, a far better starting point for making a good drink.
Try it at VERA — specialty café and wellness bistro, Nikole Spasića 4, Stari Grad, Belgrade.
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