There are some low or no alcohol beers that are pretty good, that taste similar enough to regular beer to be enjoyable. It seems like the wines aren't good enough, yet anyway. So why are low and no alcohol wines so crappy?
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| According to the NY Times, these are the best no alcohol wines |
As it turns out, alcohol adds a lot to a wine. It's the fermentation process that turns grape juice into wine. Fermentation is converting the grape sugars into alcohol.
The body (weight) of the wine, the mouthfeel (viscosity), the flavors (such as fruitiness), the aromas, and the ability to age are all heavily influenced by alcohol. With traditional wines, the higher the alcohol the bolder, the heavier the wine. Lower alcohol wines are lighter in body and maybe flavor.
Winemaking is actually a fairly precise process. This is why even organic or natural wines often taste different and can't age. Winemaking as it's done today is something honed over thousands of years. Even what you'd call modern winemaking has been around for about 150 years. There's a reason grape growing and winemaking are done the way they are done today, and it's from those generations of accumulated knowledge.
Trying to make lower alcohol wines, even around 5%, give you a thin, less fruity, less complex wine. Some low alcohol wines will have added sugar and fruit juice to adjust the body and fruitiness, but at a cost. Cheap traditional wines are often sweet to mask flaws to make the wine more drinkable. Adding sugar to wine is illegal in California, but is okay in other places.
What is needed is the Saccharine of wine. Not an artificial sweetener, but a replacement for the alcohol that adds back in those lost characteristics. There could be a zillion dollars made by whoever invents something that makes great tasting wine, but doesn't have the issues of putting too much alcohol in your body.
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