This week could have been about anything really. I was half thinking of doing non-alcoholic cocktails, or maybe the soft drinks, but no, I decided to stick with trying out non-alcoholic wines instead. I’ve never had any before, so seemed like a great time to learn about the how’s and why’s of this stuff.
I picked up a bottle of Sainsbury’s Non-Alcoholic Sparkling Wine, for the handsome price of £2.75. This is sourced from Germany, somewhere it seems that a lot of non-alcoholic wines in Europe are made. Why Germany? Maybe someone can tell me.
One of the things that I noticed on the label was the term “aromatised non-alcoholic wine”. This means they’ve added natural flavourings to the base wine. This used to be done to mask tastes, but maybe in this case it’s just going down the same lines as the German May Wine. I’m not sure the exact reason, but the smells of this wine was really heavy elderflower and granny smith apple. But surely adding extra flavourings takes the point out of using the fermented flavours in the first place?!?!
The taste was sweet, well, medium sweet anyway, very bubbly. You know what, it was near as damn it the same as drinking Schloer (check it out on the internet if you don’t know what that is). It just left me thinking, what was the point?
Why not just go for a soft drink alternative? There are so many “boutique-y” pressés and ginger ales and all that kind of stuff out there. It’s like after an F1 in Abu Dhabi they use sparkling rose water instead of champagne. Not a bad idea, right?
Maybe non-alcoholic wine is just more trouble than it’s worth. Maybe I need to try more premium ones. Who knows? 5/20, just cos I like Schloer.
Cheers
Other Posts in NWTW Week 42:
#NWTW Week 42: Non-Alcoholic Week
