Have yourself a very sober Christmas
No- and low-alcohol drinks have been a big trend of 2024 - so how do they compare? Plus: what (alcohol) I've been drinking this week
Exactly how merry will your Christmas be? In the latest of a series of grim statistics for the booze industry this year, a recent survey suggested than more than a fifth of parties this festive season will be alcohol free. Last month events management platform Togather said that 21 per cent of the Christmas parties it is organising will be dry, up two per cent on last year.
“It’s clear that Christmas parties are evolving in ways that align with Gen Z’s values,” commented a Togather spokesperson of the kind eminently replaceable by AI. She implied that these young funsters are keener on “Instagrammable venues” than a chunky tab behind the bar. The youth of today, eh?
Whether the drift to teetotalism is a matter of values or just cash remains an open question. A poll last year found that nearly a third of Britons aged 18-24 don’t drink alcohol, up from 18 per cent in 2011 – slightly ahead of the trend for the whole population. But another survey of European adults aged 18-34 found that while two-thirds had cut back on their spending on alcohol in bars and restaurants, most cited cost-of-living pressures as the main reason.
I wrote recently about these trends amid the redoubled drive by anti-alcohol campaigners globally to demonise all drinking, buoyed by last year’s shrill World Health Organisation claim that “No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health.” Just last month, Finland became the latest nation to fall victim to the neo-prohibitionists, with the government’s food authority encouraging Finns to “abstain entirely from alcohol”. Finns? Good luck with that one.
But whatever the reasons, sales of no- and low-alcohol (NOLO) drinks are rising fast. Overall, NOLO sales in the UK are projected to grow at around seven per cent a year for the next few years – while wine sales fall. As for beer, in 2023 British pubs sold more than 120 million pints of NOLO beer, up 14 per cent on the previous year. Almost nine out of ten UK pubs now offer at least one such brew. And sales of Guinness’s 0.0% doubled in Europe in the year to June.
There is significant wine industry interest in NOLO products too. At next February’s Wine Paris fair, one of the trade’s most important gatherings, the floor space dedicated to NOLO products is doubling and will boast a dedicated tasting area. As organiser Vinexposium’s CEO, Rodolphe Lameyse, pointed out to IWSC News this week, “A number of Bordeaux producers have been investing significantly in de-alcoholising their wines, and Moët Hennessy recently bought a minority stake in alcohol-free sparkling wine brand French Bloom.”
With what sounded more like a note of desperation, Lameyse added, “Any innovations that help to make wine more fashionable to consumers need to be embraced.” For while the wine and spirits industries see an opportunity in NOLO products, there’s a slightly panicked edge to this future-proofing of their businesses.
And those consumers – fashionable or not – do now have many other NOLO choices. Non-drinkers can choose from an astonishing range of kombuchas, drinks such as the Wine Society’s pleasant Generation Series Botanical Brew, and no-alcohol “spirits” such as Seedlip’s range. I’m not going to attempt to review these because for a start, Tamlyn Currin at JancisRobinson.com did an excellent survey (£) last week, and because, well, I’ve got better things to do with my time than take tasting notes on glorified Coke.
I do drink some non-alcoholic beer – notes on the more palatable ones below – but wine is altogether trickier. The obvious but fundamental problem is that alcohol is a much bigger proportion of the volume of wine than it is of most beers, and a more integral part of its flavour. It contributes body and viscosity, as well as mouthfeel, especially for red wines – much less important for beer and indeed for white spirits such as gin and vodka.
What’s more, taking the alcohol out of wine involves complicated industrial processes that can hardly fail to alter its flavour. The most common method – as for beer – is vacuum distillation. Wine is heated to around 35℃ in a vacuum, which means that the ethanol boils off at a much lower temperature than normal, ostensibly avoiding damage to flavour compounds in the remaining liquid, which stays below boiling point.
The other main technique for de-alcoholising wine is reverse osmosis. Here, wine is filtered at high pressure through a very fine permeable membrane which allows the smaller water and ethanol molecules through, leaving larger ones associated with flavour compounds and tannins on the pressurised side of the membrane. The water and alcohol then pass to a distillation column, which separates the two. Finally the water is mixed back together with the flavour compounds, colour and tannins. It is costly and very energy intensive, though employed by some Californian producers to reduce alcohol levels; its use to de-alcoholise wine completely is more novel.
Manufacturers claim that such processes do not damage the flavour of the resulting non-alcoholic wines. But let me put it this way: I would rather be eaten alive by a vole than have to drink this dross through a meal. The sparklers I’ve tried have been more inoffensive than the still ones: I can actually imagine drinking more than a glass of South African Lautus de-alcoholised sparkling wine at a party (RAKQ, Cellar Door and elsewhere, from £11.50). Otherwise, while the still whites are less actively vile than the reds, it’s hard for me to imagine why anyone would drink these in preference to, say, a lemonade.
Part of the problem may be the effect of alcohol when drinking a succession of several drinks: even if you’re not perceptibly drunk, one glass tends to lead to another among friends. By contrast, I just wouldn’t want more than one non-alcoholic beer at a sitting. As one non-drinker friend and kombucha afficionado tells me, “I tend to want just one drink and then go home.” Perhaps this is partly why Manchester’s only alcohol-free bar, Love From, went bust last August after only eight months. And in 2022 Brewdog’s alcohol-free London bar near Old St closed after just a couple of years, though the firm shut several bars at the same time for economic reasons.
This Christmas, most of us will resist the pressures of fashion and drink alcohol as always at parties, meals and family gatherings. I’m glad that those who cannot or choose not to drink booze have so much more choice these days. And god knows, an office party on Brewdog AF is more sensible than ending up face down in a large shared cocktail at Bunga Bunga. But at least for dedicated wine drinkers, the choice is pretty clear cut: a 125ml or 175ml glass?
Four no- or low-alcohol beers to try
Maisels’s Weisse – this NOLO Hefe Weissbier is surprisingly close to the flavour of the real thing, yeasty, malty and quite substantial.
Bristol Beer Company Clear Head – one of my go-to alcohol-free brews. A nice, creamy body (the company claim it’s because they add lactose.) If you order direct from them, you can make up a free-shipping order with the some of the rest of their very good (alcoholic) beers.
Adnam’s Ghost Ship 0.5% Pale Ale – Adnam’s alcohol-free version of their popular Ghost Ship IPA is made using reverse osmosis but isn’t too much the worst for it. Malty and rounder than some.
Drop Bear Beer Co Yuzu Pale Ale – a lighter, fresher brew, citrussy with a pleasing bitter note – albeit still with a bit of a hole where the alcohol would be.
What I’ve been drinking this week
Fontodi Chianti Classico 2021 - textbook Chianti from one of the most reliable of the region’s producers, farmed organically near Panzano. Full of ripe cherry fruit; herbal notes and firm tannins - lovely (Lay & Wheeler, Petersham Cellar, London End Wines and elsewhere, from £20.)
Château Sainte-Eulalie “La Cantilène” 2020, Minervois La Lavinière - Isabelle Coustal’s wines have for at least a decade been some of the Languedoc’s most reliably good reds. Her entry-level red and rosé are brilliant value; this, her top cuvée from a blend of Syrah, Grenache and Carignan, is also very fairly priced for the quality: rich and warm but with real polish and class (The Wine Society, £16.)
Terre Nobili “Cariglio” 2021, Calabria - made organically, mainly from the local Magliocco grape in Calabria, the “toe” of Italy, this is a dark, deeply coloured wine: rich, spicy, bursting with dark berry fruit but still with a nice freshness to it (Buon Vino, Iron & Rose, Salusbury Winestore, Passione Vino, from £22.)
Add Ketamine (for legal reasons this is a joke) to traditional alcohol full wine and Gen Z will start buying it.
I choose becoming Vole food! The only reason I can think of for drinking most NOLO booze is because I am the designated driver. Maybe that is why I haven't driven since 1999.