Simon’s Wine of the Week La Baume Rose 0%
In a vain attempt to look like I’m hanging with the zeitgeist I thought it was time to embrace the current no-alcohol trend. Hey, some of you might be doing dry January. In all seriousness, No/Lo is probably the fastest growing drinks category, a trend that doesn’t seem to be going away. Whilst no-alcohol beer, cider, and even spirits have really taken off, wine has somewhat lagged behind. So why, when you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between some non-alcoholic beers and their full-strength counterparts, has non-alcoholic wine not made a bigger impact?
To understand that, we need to look at how no-alcohol wine is made. To make one we need to actually start with a wine; we don’t just bottle grape juice, as this won’t have those all-important flavours from the alcoholic fermentation and will have way too much sugar. We need wine. Then we need to remove the alcohol using one of three methods:
- Heat – with heat we can ‘distill’ the wine to remove the alcohol, but high temperatures can remove aromas and flavours. If this is done in a vacuum, then the heat can be reduced, and fewer aromas and flavours are lost.
- Spinning Cone – breaks down the components and puts them back together without the alcohol. A complicate technique involving different stages at different temperatures.
- Reverse Osmosis – a very fine filter that allows wine to pass through it, but not the larger alcohol molecules.
And it’s once you’ve removed that alcohol that the difference in flavours become most apparent. Because no matter what method you use, no matter how delicately you treat the wine, once you remove the alcohol you’ve removed two things:
- Body. Remove the alcohol and you’re removing texture, you’re removing mouthfeel, you’re removing that lovely ‘burn' we associate with a good glass of wine.
- More importantly, you’re removing the very thing that holds the aromas and flavours of the wine and delivers it to your tastebuds, the alcohol. No alcohol equals less flavour. Which is why a lot of people think that no-alcohol wines taste thin and watery.
To hide that lack of body and flavour a lot of wineries will add sugar to the wine after removing the alcohol, making them sweeter. And it begins to really not taste like wine at all. Luckily, we’ve moved on over the last few years and we’re beginning to see non-alcoholic wines that are starting to really deliver. And none more so than this little beauty.
How happy were we when we found out that one of our favourite Southern French vineyards, La Baume, produced a range of non-alcoholic wines. They make a very good white Chardonnay, a red Cabernet Syrah, but the undoubted jewel in the crown is their rose, a blend of Grenache and Cinsault. When I say this is the best non-alcoholic wine I’ve ever tasted there is not a hint of hyperbole. Yes, it’s light and fresh, but it’s also nice and dry with crisp notes of raspberry, strawberry and a touch of floral. Absolutely perfect for the wine drinker who wants to drive, or just wants a few glasses without the ill effects the next morning.
If you want to get on the No/Lo bandwagon then this is the wine for you.
Have a great week all,
Simon
