It’s a strange distinction to make. What’s the difference between grape juice, and non-alcoholic wine? Sounds like it should be the same thing.
But it’s not. Any kind of wine needs to be fermented to be called wine, so there’s the difference between wines and grape juice. Problem is that any time you ferment something, you naturally get alcohol as part of the finished article.
Trick to making non-alcoholic wines is to get the alcohol back out without ruining the flavour of wine. I only know of two main techniques, both a bit science-y, and hopefully your eyes won’t roll too much.
- Reverse Osmosis
Osmosis is where you suck liquid into something. So reverse osmosis is where you suck it out. In this case the water and the alcohol out of the wine. Then you boil off the alcohol, and pop the water back into the wine gloop that remained.
- Vacuum Distillation
Under pressure you can lower the boiling point of alcohol. Then you can “boil” it off without raising the temperature of the wine too much and messing up the flavours.
Both methods are fairly expensive/time-consuming, so still not 100% sure what the point of doing all this is, but there you go. We’ll have a taste this weekend and see if it’s all worth it.
Cheers
Other Posts in NWTW Week 42:
#NWTW Week 42: Non-Alcoholic Week
#NWTW Week 42: Why Go Alcohol Free?
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Reverse Osmosis apparatus, all seems a bit over the top to me!
