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How was the hangover on New Year’s Day and how tight is
your waistband? Yep it’s the first week of January, the week after you’re
spent a month partying and eating and drinking to excess. Many of us are on the
wagon at this time of year and Martin will be discussing the low and no alcohol
alternatives for wine drinkers with Sean Moncreiff on the Afternoon Show today
(4/1/08) on Newstalk 106-108FM from about 3.20pm.
In the interests of research I have been sharing your pain! I
haven’t had a drink since New Year’s Eve, so this is my 4th day.
No big deal some may say but for someone who writes and broadcasts about wine
for a living it’s a rare enough thing. It’s weird and yes I’m having
cravings and some aches as my body adjusts.
It seemed natural to try some non-alcoholic wines or beers to
see if that would fool me in the manor of a nicotine patch for smokers. I picked
my samples up in Tesco and Sainsbury’s in London last week but you’ll
probably find some in shops here in Ireland or you can buy yours on your trip to
IKEA in Belfast, as half the population will probably visit in the next few
months.
First a little technical background. Most of these products
apparently start life as regular wine and are then processed to remove the
alcohol. There are three ways to do this. One is something called reverse
osmosis where essentially the alcohol is filtered out though a membrane under
pressure. The second is a so called spinning cone or centrifuge which separates
the constituent parts and thirdly a form of vacuum distillation which evaporates
the alcohol at a much lower temperature than its regular boiling point.
None of this does much of the flavour of a wine as you can
imagine but, while aromas and flavours may suffer, the biggest problem regarding
palatability in my experience is the very absence of the alcohol. But that’s
the whole point you say. Well yes but it’s a critical part of the flavour and
texture of a wine. It adds richness, roundness and viscosity to the liquid,
which when removed leaves it tasting thin and tart. Producers counter this by
adding sweetness, often in the form of concentrated unfermented grape juice. The
result is usually something that ends up tasting like, well grape juice. Not
unpleasant, but the bottom line is that sadly you don’t simply get a wine with
all the flavour but none of the alcohol. If only.
A few word on terminology. In the UK at least as far as I can
tell the following is the case while I haven’t found an Irish government
reference yet:
'non alcoholic' is just that; no alcohol at all.
alcohol free’ is for drinks not above 0.05% abv;
dealcoholised’ is not above 0.5% abv, and;
low alcohol’ is not above 1.2% abv, after which duty is payable, and a selling
licence required.
Low alcohol wines have been in the news recently in the UK as
remarkably they have been banned there. Several retailers believe that there is
a demand for wine with lower levels of alcohol – say 8-10% and started to sell
brands that had this sort of level, notably a brand called
bb , which is a Chilean wine that had has been shipped to Spain where the
spinning come method was used to lower the alcohol prior to bottling
The Food Standards Authority (FSA) stepped in and say that
under EU law it can’t be classified as wine and they must relabel it.
Seemingly different countries interpret this differently as the Spanish and
French do sell such products. Once again I’m not sure on the Irish stance on
the issue.
In
case you have given up drink as part of a diet and are wondering about calories This
link
will take you to a page that tells you how to calculate it exactly how many
calories per glass there are but in general for a 125ml glass (ie 6 glasses to a
bottle) expect these amounts for various alcohol levels:
8
% = 55
10% = 70
12% = 85
14% = 100
Residual
sweetness (RS) in a wine adds a few calories too, e.g. 2 g/l
RS (common even in dry wines) adds one calorie so a medium sweet wine (eg
liebfraumilch) with ten times that adds another ten calories per glass.
In
comparison, a measure of spirits (35ml in Ireland) at 40% has about 77 calories,
but watch that sugar laden mixer, while a pint of draft Guinness has about 245
calories, as far as I can tell from scanning the web.
For
carb counters following the Atkins diet, wine has very low levels of less than
2g per glass. Most spirits are negligible too, while Guinness has about 16g per
pint as far as I can tell, but different sources quote different amounts.
During
the show we’ll taste Sainsbury’s Alcohol Free White wine (0.05% abv) at £2.49
and Eisberg Alcohol Free Chardonnay (0.05%) white wine from Tesco UK at £2.79
and Cobra Alcohol Free Premium Lager (0.0%), €4.99 per 4 pack in Tesco Ireland
and no doubt many other shops.
This
UK website http://www.lono.co.uk/ is
dedicated to low or no alcohol free wines and has lots of info on the subject.
Hand
on heart I can’t really recommend any of them as a replacement for real wine
but they might form part of a range of alternatives, which for me have included
all sorts of fruit juices, carbonated drinks, mineral waters and fruit teas. If
you want something with lower alcohol, but not alcohol free, try a Mosel
Riesling Kabinett, many of which are only 8.5% abv. They taste like real wine
and I had a Dr L Riesling by Ernie Loosen recently that was delicious. Don’t
forget Asti or Moscato Spumante, which have 5 or 6% abv. There’s also of
course Lambrusco (8-10 %abv) or Lambrusco light (5-6%abv)but you might be too
embarrassed to be seen with them in youe shopping trolley.
Good
luck if you too are on the wagon. I know how difficult it can be.
Martin
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