2015–2020s · Worldwide
The no- and low-alcohol category grows
Dealcoholisation technology and changing drinking patterns created a category that wine law had to catch up with.
What happened
Removing alcohol from wine is technically difficult, because the compounds that carry aroma are volatile and leave with the ethanol, and because ethanol itself contributes body and carries aroma.
The techniques used are vacuum distillation, which works at low temperature to limit damage; spinning cone columns, which separate aroma fractions and can return them afterwards; and reverse osmosis.
EU rules were amended to permit partial and full dealcoholisation of wine and to define how the resulting products may be labelled, which had not previously been possible for products called wine.
UK labelling descriptors for alcohol-free and low-alcohol products are set out in guidance and have been under review, so the thresholds should be checked rather than assumed.
WineHQ covers the category as a production and sensory question. It makes no health claim about it in either direction.
How firmly this is dated
Documented. Recorded contemporaneously. The date is not in question.
Regulatory developments including EU rules permitting dealcoholisation of wine, and UK labelling guidance. A volatile category; figures date quickly.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013 — Common Organisation of Agricultural Markets — European Union
- Food Standards Agency — wine standards and food labelling — Food Standards Agency
- International Code of Oenological Practices — OIV
Along the timeline
Before · 2003–2020s
Smoke taint becomes a recognised risk
Major bushfire and wildfire seasons turned a curiosity into a category-scale commercial risk, and drove the research that explained it.
After · 2023
Genomics revises the domestication story
Sequencing thousands of vines indicated domestication happened in more than one place at around the same time.