The Current - Why is non-alcoholic wine so bad?

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

While it's easy to find a hops-forward IPA or a crisp lager that fools even the best beer connoisseur… de-alcoholized wines leave something to be desired. They are often too bitter, too sweet, or too watery, tasting more like something you would serve at a kids' party than an adult beverage. So we speak with Wes Pearson, a senior research scientist and sensory group manager at the Australian Wine Research Institute about why that is, and how we can change that. 

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. If you are a wine lover trying dry January, and the non-alcoholic wines have got you feeling like this... Oh, dear, it tastes like a moxacillin. This one's burning my throat. Now I'm getting notes of tomato. Don't worry.

Shit screeks, Moira, and David Rose feel your pain, while it is easy to find. mind zero alcohol, hops forward IPAs or crisp loggers that fool even the best beer connoisseurs. De-alcoholized wines leave something to be desired for many people. They are often too bitter, too sweet, too watery, tasting more like expensive grape juice than an adult beverage. But one Canadian is trying to change that. Wes Pearson is a senior research scientist and sensory group manager at the Australian Wine Research

Institute. Wes, hello. Hello, Matt. How you doing? I'm well, thanks. This is the big question that I think a lot of people who are going through January are interested in is, why does most de-alcoholized wine taste so bad? Well, I think one of the things, one of the big things about de-alcoholized wine is when you take the alcohol or the ethanol out of the wine,

how drastically it changes the finished product. When you look at what's happening with beer, for instance, you know, they're taking a lot less alcohol to take out. right we're looking at four or five percent wine you've got you know as much as 15 percent of the product is is alcohol and you pull that out and alcohol is such a unique chemical compound right it's it it does all sorts of a very unique things and when you take that out of the wine it really it really changes it from from that idea of what we all you know when we smell and taste wine it really changes that that perception and what's left is not really the same thing. What is the alcohol...

What is the alcohol add? Because, I mean, it, you know, that it gives you a buzz, but in terms of flavor, and people talk about mouthfeel, for example, what is, what is the alcohol doing to the wine that is, you know, the kind of wine that people would drink, typically, not de-alcoholized wine, but alcoholized wine? Yeah, well, it's, the mouthfeel's the first thing, right? And I mean, we've all tasted, you know, like spirits, neat spirits, right? Vodka or gin or whatever. You get that burning sensation when you taste when you taste that alcohol by itself you also get that in ethanol it's or sorry in wine and it's masked a little bit by you know the rest of the flavor compounds and the tannins and the acid and those things but but it's still it's still there and so that that's

an integral part of that as well you get that burning sensation you get that mouth feel and of course you get that those psychotropic effects the little bit of getting a little bit wobbly those kind of effects are, you know, they're very unique from a chemical compound perspective. And there's nothing else that really kind of does all of those things. And so inherently, it's kind of the DNA of wine is that ethanol component. And it's interesting. I mean, you hinted at this, but for beer, it used to be near beer, which was kind of the de-alcoholized beer that you might buy in the grocery store.

It wasn't particularly great. But now there are craft brewers. There are, it gets pretty close to the real thing. And this, in some ways you say, is just because of the amount of alcohol that is in beer compared to wine? Well, that is one element. But one thing about beer that they have is they've just, they've got a lot more tools in the toolbox. You know, with wine, kind of like, wines made from grapes, right? There's not like an ingredients list on the back of your wine bottle.

where beer, we've got lots of different, there's different steps in the process and they can use different things, you know, different ingredients throughout the process that can really kind of help add that or replace that mouthfeel component that alcohol gives when it's, when it's been taken out, right? And there's different processes that they can use to create that effect. But it's really, they do a pretty good job, isn't it? Like, as you say, the products they're making today are, they're pretty close to, like, what you'd expect as traditional beer. Are there some non-alcoholic wines or low alcohol wines that work better than others? Yeah, definitely. I think that you see wines that tend to be lower alcohol to begin with, they're a bit more suited to this process. And again, it's kind of like I mentioned with the beer, when you're taking less of that.

less of the out, you know, it's easier to kind of understand that or imagine how it's, it's similar to that original product. So sparkling wine, Prosecco, mosquitoes, light white wines, they tend to be better approximations in the in the no and low alcohol space. We see those products there. It's starting to get pretty close to pretty close approximations of traditional wine. We know that people are drinking less and there is presumably a huge market for non-alcoholic beverages. What's getting in the way of innovation when it comes to making good de-alcoholized wine? One of the problems, I think traditionally we've seen in in how innovation works, certainly in the wine industry, is that we have lots of small producers who are trying lots of

different things, right? They might do, you know, have different experimentation. They might find something that works. They might find something that doesn't. You know, they can do things in small batches and it's not risky and it doesn't cost them a lot of money. Where the problem with dealkalized wine is that the equipment to remove the ethanol is very expensive. And so what we're seeing is that we're seeing only the biggest wine producers have the capability to invest in this technology. And so that step, that kind of organic innovation that happens really at at a very kind of micro level in the industry, it isn't happening. And so that's been a little bit of a barrier.

We've had to take a different approach to how we, you know, how R&D is happening in this product category because it's, you know, we've just relied on the small guys to look after it for so many years. And, you know, that's just not happening. And so there's been a bit of a lag between, you know, say the development of the non-alcoholic beer, beer market and the non-alcoholic spirits market as well where they've had, you know, successful product development. And the products are good. And we're just not quite there in wine.

It's a slow process and we're starting to get there. And certainly the products that we're seeing in the marketplace now compared to even five years ago are significantly better. Is your sense that winemakers are interested in this? Because winemaking is so tied up with history and tradition. People talk about terroir. People talk about place. and the long history of those places.

And so are the winemakers actually interested in something like this, do you think? In certain wine businesses, there definitely would be, right? And I think, again, as you mentioned, people are drinking less wine. And so we want, as, you know, as winemakers and wine businesses, we want to keep people drinking wine. If that's de-alcoholized wine, I think that's still a win, right? We've still kept them to drinking, you know, there's all of that kind of farm-to-table steps. People are still growing grapes.

These grapes are still being turned into wine. still being processed in these businesses and we're moving the alcohol. We're still keeping them in the product category. And I think that's what we want. So I think if the pragmatic winemakers, they see this and they want to be a part of it, right, is the kind of classic winemaker, you know, that's in the dungy cellar, old guy who's, you know, pulling wines out of his old barrels or whatever, he's probably not on board with this.

That's probably not who's looking at this product category. But certainly the innovative wine companies, they'd be all over this for sure. Two quick things before I let you go. One is, should we even be calling this wine? You know, I think that we probably should. It's certainly, I mean, what you might see on the shelves in a grocery store, you know, it's packaged like wine, right?

It's in a wine bottle. The label looks like wine. It's either sealed with a cork or screw cap like traditional wine is. So I think it, and it serves the same kind of purpose as wine does on an occasion, right? you're having a meal or you're having drinks with friends. It's in that same kind of thing. So for me, I'm pretty comfortable calling it, you know, wine or dealkalcoholized wine, non-alcoholic wine. You know, there is an element of these products that can be like wine-based beverages, but for me, it's still made from wine.

And for people just finally who, I mean, they're tired of drinking sparkling water while somebody else is having a glass of wine. They're having a lovely meal and they want something else, but this isn't cutting it. What are the wine alternatives that you might suggest? Yeah, look out for, you know, there's lots of different products that are out there that are perhaps not necessarily wine based, but are, they're kind of packaged in that same way, right? They look like they're like a grown-up drink. So sparkling teas, kombuchas, things like that. They're all pretty interesting. They've got complex flavors.

Sometimes it's a bit of fermentation involved to kind of give some more of that texture in complexity. I think those are pretty, those can satisfy and fill the role of some of these, of wine, say if you're not going to drink it this month. That could probably do the job. Wes, thank you very much for this. No problem. Matt, my pleasure. Wes Pearson is from Winnipeg. He's a senior research scientist and sensory group manager at the Australian Wine Research Institute.

This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at CBC. CBC.ca.ca.c.com or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.