Dealcoholisation

What dealcoholisation is

Dealcoholisation is the umbrella term for any technique that removes alcohol from an already-fermented wine. The OIV (the international wine organisation) authorises three processes: thermal evaporation at low pressure (vacuum distillation), aroma recovery through spinning-cone columns, and membrane filtration (reverse osmosis). In practice producers combine methods to strip alcohol without erasing aroma.

The sequence is always the same. Grapes are first fermented into normal wine; only afterwards does dealcoholisation begin. The wine completes its entire aroma and flavour development. What the process removes is mostly ethanol; what remains has the chemical foundation of wine, only without alcoholic weight.

How the three main techniques work

Vacuum distillation heats the wine under sharply reduced pressure, so alcohol evaporates at low temperature (around 30 °C). It minimises heat damage but loses volatile aromas alongside the alcohol; those aromas must be collected separately and reintroduced.

Spinning-cone technique uses a rotating column where the wine flows as a thin film along heated surfaces. Volatile aromas are first captured in a separate pass; the wine is then stripped of alcohol; finally the aromas are re-injected.

Reverse osmosis forces the wine under high pressure through a semi-permeable membrane. Water and alcohol pass through; colour, sugar and most flavour compounds stay behind. The alcohol portion is then removed by distillation, and the water portion is mixed back into the concentrated wine.

The critical point

None of the three techniques removes alcohol without consequences. Body, mouthfeel and warmth come in large part from ethanol; restoring those without artificial additives is beyond any machine. Producers can use sugar, glycerin or additives to compensate, but that drifts away from the wine idea. The most honest alcohol-free wines accept that the glass feels different and shape production around that, instead of pretending nothing changed.

What it costs

Dealcoholisation is expensive. A spinning-cone installation runs into the hundreds of thousands of euros. Small producers usually work with contract operators offering the service; that creates back-and-forth logistics and added cost. A dealcoholised bottle therefore tends to be priced higher than its alcoholic counterpart for the business to make sense, despite carrying less “content”.

Main contract operators

Three commercial dealcoholisers dominate the European market: Schmitt-Söhne in Germany (mainly for German Riesling), Flavourtech-equipped operations across multiple countries (Australian-developed equipment also used by large Spanish and Italian cooperatives), and Bevtech in the United Kingdom. Small producers wanting to launch an alcohol-free line typically ship 5,000 to 50,000 litres of wine to such an operator, pay €0.80 to €1.50 per litre in technique cost alone, and wait 4 to 8 weeks for return shipping. For specialist projects like Cul Sec it works differently: they build from scratch rather than dealcoholising existing wine.

Vineyard adjustments for 0%

The best alcohol-free wines start from grapes specifically chosen for low-alcohol vinification. Earlier-harvested Sauvignon Blanc (at 10-11% potential alcohol rather than 13%), Riesling with higher natural acidity, hybrid varieties like Solaris that ripen lower naturally. Some producers turn back to grapes that ripen in cooler regions (England, Germany) because the starting material survives dealcoholisation with more flavour intact. That’s more than a cellar trick, it’s a complete production strategy.

Regulatory framing

EU Regulation 2021/2117 authorises dealcoholisation via three methods (vacuum distillation, spinning-cone, reverse osmosis) and requires transparent labelling. Products above 0.5% ABV cannot be labelled “alcohol-free”. Terms like “0.0%” only apply when below 0.05%. US TTB regulation is comparable but less strict on labelling precision.