Non-alcoholic wine testing has become an essential component of both wineries and consumers’ practices, with more people opting to reduce their alcohol intake, leading to demand for wines with lower ABVs. Unfortunately, creating high quality non-alcoholic wines requires trial-and-error to find their ideal balance – usually, low-alcoholic wines have higher sugar contents compared to their alcoholic counterparts, altering taste, mouthfeel and aroma; additionally, alcohol wines carry aromas which cannot always transfer across to non-alcoholic wines; this can further impact flavor development and make their creation challenging.
Vacuum distillation is the preferred method for creating non-alcoholic wine, using heat to evaporate away ethanol without burning or boiling it, thus preserving original wine flavors and aromas. Winemakers take great care in selecting an appropriate temperature that allows evaporation but doesn’t cause cooking of their product; any excess ethanol removed during this process can then be reused in other products that need it.
Other methods, like reverse osmosis, require much more water and may have detrimental effects on the final product. Before dealcoholization and formulation take place, it is also vitally important to conduct stability testing of wine before dealcoholization and formulation, such as analyses for free/total SO2, titratable acidity, sugar, potassium etc. These analyses may indicate whether protein fined wines exist that impact its ability to withstand heat during dealcoholization/cannibing/canning as well as help prevent issues with microbial growth problems in canned wines.