With the increasing popularity of non-alcoholic (NA) wines, it’s no surprise that home winemakers are wondering if they can craft their own. The short answer is that while it’s possible to remove alcohol from wine, doing so effectively at home is extremely challenging if not downright impossible. Unlike beer, which has a lower alcohol content to begin with and a different production process, wine presents unique hurdles when it comes to alcohol removal. The primary challenge lies in removing alcohol while preserving the wine’s essential character. Alcohol contributes to a wine’s mouthfeel, structure, and aroma. Simply boiling it off, as one might with beer, isn’t ideal, since heat can destroy delicate volatile compounds, leading to a flat and unbalanced final product that doesn’t “taste like wine.” Commercial non-alcoholic wines use advanced techniques such as vacuum distillation, reverse osmosis, or spinning cone columns. These methods allow winemakers to separate alcohol from wine without excessive and complete damage to flavor and structure, but they require highly specialized and expensive equipment not to mention a litany of additives and practice to try to restore the wine back to a shadow of itself. Most if not all of this is beyond the reach of most home winemakers, which is why I think it’s more realistic to shoot for a lower-alcohol wine as a home winemaker.
Non-alcoholic beer is somewhat easier to produce because it typically starts with a lower alcohol content, usually around 4–6% ABV, whereas wine generally contains 12–15%. This means that removing alcohol from beer requires less aggressive processing. Additionally, beer’s flavor profile relies more on hops and carbonation, making it more forgiving when alcohol is removed. Wine, on the other hand, depends heavily on the balance between alcohol, acidity, tannins, and sugar. Without alcohol, wine can taste thin, overly tart, or lacking in complexity.
Brewers (and some non-alcoholic, non-wine-based beverage producers) are practically dispensing with fermentation altogether and are basing their no- and low-alcohol products on tinctures, extracts, and added aromas. Alcohol is of course a great solvent but water’s not too bad, especially when heat is involved. It’s possible to steep grains, hops, and other aromatics in order to extract a good portion of the polysaccharides, flavors, and aromas present in beer. Beer is always boiled anyway during the brewing process so these heat-extracted compounds are expected and welcomed. Because wine is not boiled, heating during the process automatically starts to take the beverage into the territory of not tasting like wine.
One way to naturally reduce alcohol content in home winemaking — without the need for complicated alcohol removal techniques — is to start with lower-sugar grapes. The sugar content of grapes, measured in Brix, determines the final alcohol level of a fermented wine. Riper grapes with higher Brix will ferment into a higher-alcohol wine, while less-ripe grapes with lower Brix produce a wine with lower alcohol. If your goal is to create a naturally lower-alcohol wine, consider harvesting grapes earlier than usual, before they reach peak ripeness. A target sugar level of 17–19 °Brix (rather than the usual 22–25 for most table wines) can result in a final alcohol content of around 9–10% ABV.
However, using lower-Brix grapes comes with trade-offs. Less-ripe grapes tend to have higher acidity, which can lead to tart or green tastes. To balance this, you may need to adjust winemaking techniques, such as using a yeast strain that enhances body and mouthfeel or incorporating blending techniques or de-acidification with potassium bicarbonate to soften the sharpness. Another option is backsweetening with a small amount of grape concentrate post-fermentation to create a more rounded, palatable wine.
Although replicating commercial alcohol-removal techniques at home isn’t realistic, a few experimental approaches might yield a wine with slightly lower alcohol content. The most straightforward method involves gently heating the wine in an attempt to evaporate the alcohol. Ideally, this should be done at a low temperature — below 140 °F (60 °C) — to minimize damage to aromatics. A double boiler or slow cooker on a low setting can help maintain gentle heat, but loss of volatile aromas and structural changes to the wine are inevitable. This method often results in a wine that tastes “cooked” or flat, so adjustments may be needed to restore balance. Personally, I’ve never attempted this (have only heard about folks trying it), so winemaker, beware!
A more practical approach might be blending finished wine with dealcoholized commercial wine or even non-fermented grape juice. This can help maintain some body and flavor while reducing overall alcohol content. However, the result will be more of a “wine-inspired” beverage rather than true non-alcoholic wine. Why not consider making your own kind of “wine cooler” or spritzer, by blending some of your lower-alcohol wine with sparkling water and adding in dashes of fruit juices or other flavors to keep the beverage interesting? If there’s residual sugar this may be tough to bottle up and keep stable but it’s certainly something you could package in a keg or mix in the moment like a wine-based cocktail.
It’s pretty much impossible to make an alcohol-free wine at home with today’s available technology without significantly compromising the wine’s character. For a more acceptable and truly non-alcoholic wine, store-bought options remain the most reliable choice. Technology is constantly evolving and with new marketplace demand, commercial NA wines are getting better and better all the time. Your best option is likely to find one you like on a shelf.
