Napa Valley pros start buzz with alcohol-free wine
During traditional working hours, second-generation Napa vintner Jake Krausz helps run Napa Valley’s Arkenstone Vineyards. But when he’s not at the winery, he works on a side business that many within Napa’s wine industry would likely balk at: an online retail shop for nonalcoholic beverages.
When Krausz and his wife, Adrienne Stillman Krausz, a cocktail writer, decided to cut back on alcohol before starting a family this year, they sampled dozens of nonalcoholic drinks. They wanted options that resembled the wine or cocktails they typically enjoyed at home — not simply water or soda — but struggled to find anything they liked.
“We tried so many bad things,” Jake Krausz recalled.
But during the COVID-19 pandemic, they noticed new innovation within the nonalcoholic drink sector, resulting in better-tasting beers, wine and spirits that don’t rely on artificial additives or sugar. This inspired the couple to launch the Dry Goods Beverage Co., an online retailer of nonalcoholic products that “are not full of garbage,” said Jake Krausz.
It’s a bold move in their home of Napa Valley, where the buzzing nonalcoholic beverage market is a small but growing threat to the premium wine industry. Plus, nonalcoholic wines still bear a stigma of being poorly made, unbalanced and overly sweet.
Similar to the boom of low-alcohol beverages like hard seltzers in recent years, the wellness movement is driving huge growth in nonalcoholic beers, wines and spirits. Demand has kickstarted a trend of sober bars and shops, and nonalcoholic beverages are now standard on menus at bars and restaurants, including fine-dining establishments like the French Laundry and Atelier Crenn.
According to a recent study from data analyst IWSR, production of low- and noalcohol beverages in the U.S. grew by 31% in 2021, and 33% of U.S. adults purchase no- or low-alcohol beverages. Brandy Rand, chief operating officer of the Americas at IWSR, said that no-alcohol products are the “main growth driver” in the category versus lowalcohol drinks.
“The pace of innovation over the past few years has been remarkable,” Rand said.
The Krauszes aren’t the only wine professionals moving into this territory.
A handful of other Napa Valley industry veterans also see potential — especially when it comes to appealing to young, health-conscious consumers — and are using their wine experience to improve the reputation of nonalcoholic beverages. One of the products Dry Goods carries, for example, is All the Bitter, a line of alcohol-free bitters from Ian and Carly Blessing, former sommeliers at the French Laundry.
The Blessings decided to stop drinking after having children, but they wanted a legitimate alternative to alcohol.
“Neither one of us lost any interest in tasting drinks,” Ian Blessing said. “Just because we’re not drinking alcohol anymore doesn’t mean we want to be confined to water, tea, coffee, lemonade.”
Instead of baking bread during the pandemic, he developed an interest in fermentation and herbalism, which eventually led to producing nonalcoholic bitters with organic botanicals — like dandelion root and milk thistle seed — that are believed to offer health benefits. Ian Blessing said bitters were “the one ingredient that was really lacking” when it came to creating appealing nonalcoholic cocktails.
But the sommelier also expressed frustration in the lack of quality nonalcoholic wines, which can be much more challenging to pull off than alcohol-free beer or spirits.
When alcohol is removed from a wine, beer or spirit, many of the beverage’s best characteristics — like the aromas, flavors and mouthfeel — are stripped away with it. This is less noticeable in beer, which benefits from carbonation and has the added flavors of hops and yeast. There’s also much less alcohol to strip than in wine or spirits, since beer typically hovers around 5% alcohol. According to IWSR data, there are significantly more beers than wine or spirits on the nonalcoholic market.
Spirits have the most alcohol to strip, which is why most nonalcoholic spirits are intended for cocktails as opposed to straight-up sipping.
Juices, syrups, fruits and other flavors fill in where the spirit is lacking. But nonalcoholic wine “doesn’t have any of those crutches to lean on,” said Ian Blessing.
Two former Treasury Wine Estates employees, Alex and Julia Littauer, know this struggle well; they spent over a year developing their first nonalcoholic wine for their company, Sovi Wine Co. The Littauers partnered with a winery from Yolo County’s Clarksburg wine region and, after a lot of trial and error, launched in 2021.
“It’s really hard to get it right. When you’re making it, it’s not obvious from what wine you’re starting with if it’s going to turn out well,” said Julia Littauer. “We’re only just now starting to make products that actually taste good.”
The key was sourcing quality fruit and the right grape. The Littauers discovered that some of the more popular grape varieties, like Pinot Noir, didn’t work as well as some less-traditional grapes. They landed on Tempranillo for their canned sparkling rosé and, after removing the alcohol, added a small amount of grape concentrate for balance. Sovi also produces a sparkling white and a red blend.
Evyn Cameron, a Napa Valley winemaker who has worked for wineries like Crocker and Star and Cliff Lede, has also thrown herself into the challenge, working with a cheeky nonalcoholic canned wine project called Buzzkill. The brainchild of Molly Fedick, the former creative director at dating app Hinge, Buzzkill will launch its first wine, a Sauvignon Blanc, in May.
Like Sovi, the Buzzkill team spent significant time choosing the right wine; they tasted through roughly 150 Sauvignon Blancs before deciding on the base, which comes from Lodi. Then, Cameron selected organic flavor additions that mimic the tropical flavors of Sauvignon Blanc and layer in the variety’s signature freshness and clean mouthfeel. “Once you take the alcohol away, you’re taking away the glue to the beverage and then you have to add back some other ingredients to make it seem like wine or make it taste similar,” said Cameron.
Yet even if Buzzkill were to crack the nonalcoholic wine industry open, Cameron said she doesn’t expect many of her Napa Valley peers to follow her lead anytime soon — though maybe they should. She said it could be an opportunity for wine brands to appeal to younger generations that are concerned with their health — one of the industry’s biggest challenges — but acknowledged that “a lot of the wine industry is stuck in their own way.”
It’s a slow shift, but the Blessings believe that the stigma is lessening within the alcohol industry and that more brands will start to realize adding a nonalcoholic wine to one’s portfolio isn’t all that different from restaurants offering alternatives for dietary restrictions.
“It’s the same as offering a gluten-free bun on your burger or a veggie burger,” said Carly Blessing. “There should be an option for everyone.”