A recent article appeared in Ara newspaper under the title: “Alcohol-free wine, revolution is nigh” explaining the rise of de-alcoholised wine. The journalist Leandre Ibar Penaba highlights data from the Wine Intelligence report on production and consumption of de-alcoholised wine. According to the report, there is a global trend among consumers, especially among the youngest, to reduce alcohol consumption. This has led to an increase in sales of non-alcoholic beverages worldwide.
The facts
The Wine Intelligence report shows that Spain is the fourth largest producer of de-alcoholised wine in the world, and the second in sales in other countries. In other words, quite a lot of alcohol-free wine is made here but not sold domestically; most of the de-alcoholised wine is exported. In 2020, Spain accounted for 3% of the world’s total alcohol-free wine sales in 2020, a far cry from the top places. The United Kingdom ranks first with 24%, followed by France, the United States and Germany, with 17%, 16% and 13% respectively, according to Wine Intelligence.
According to data from Idescat, the Catalan government’s statistics institute, Catalan families spent 4.1 million euros on alcohol-free wine in 2021. A figure well below the expenditure on traditional wine, which in 2021 was 350 million euros. The Wine Intelligence report corroborates the Spanish Escalé figures: in 2020 less than 0.25% of all wine consumed in Spain was alcohol-free, in contrast to beer, where the out-of-date options reach more than 6% of the total litres consumed. We are far from countries such as the UK, Finland and Belgium, where de-alcoholised wine is close to 1% of total consumption.
The trend
Ibar Penada interviews Fernando Zamora, professor at the Faculty of Oenology of the Rovira i Virgili University, who briefly explains how wine can be dealcoholised. Zamora believes that alcohol-free wines “are progressing very well”. Twenty years ago, alcohol-free beer had a bad reputation, whereas now you can see that they are very good, and alcohol-free wine is also following the same path. In Catalonia, there are a few wineries offering alcohol-free wines. One of the pioneers is Bodegas Torres, which has the Natureo range, with a white, a red, a rosé, and a delicious sparkling wine.
In our country there is a market segment looking for drinks with organoleptic properties (appearance, taste, and smell) similar to alcoholic beverages for social gatherings or circumstances in which people prefer to drink less or no alcohol at all. There is no doubt that alcohol-free drinks are a rising value.
A healthier diet
The article also includes the opinion of Roser Martí, president of the College of Dieticians and Nutritionists of Catalonia. The difference between alcohol-free wine and beer, beyond the cultural weight of wine in our society, also has connotations related to health. A common belief among many people is that wine has health benefits, especially for people with cardiovascular problems. “For some years it was said that a glass of wine a day provided antioxidants”, recalls Martí, who refutes this myth, and recalls that alcohol has negative effects on health and reminds us that alcohol has negative effects on many diseases, especially cancer and liver disease. A study published in Circulation Research has interesting results on the effect of drinking non-alcoholic red wine in people at high cardiovascular risk. Alcohol-free wine has all the polyphenols of normal wine, but no contraindications.
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