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Joyce Yip

Camille Glass – co-founder and co-owner of restaurants Brut and Pondi and wine bar Crushed in Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong – had hoped that non-alcoholic and low-alcohol wines would be the next big thing.
She was wrong.
“I was quite excited: I was used to having a glass of wine, if not three, every night, but I didn’t like the way I felt the next day,” she says. In 2022, she brought in zero-proof, organic sparkling chardonnay and rosé produced by Thomson & Scott, a British company that specialises in non-alcoholic drinks.
Also on her shelf is a piquette from US-based wine producer Limited Addition Wines (Ltd.) that boasts flavours like cranberry tea, black pepper and grapefruit.
Piquette, made by adding water to pressed grape skins, seeds and pulp, is a low-alcohol wine alternative; the one Glass stocks measures 7.8 per cent alcohol by volume (ABV), which is half that of red wines with a similar flavour profile.
However, it was not attracting customers. “We put it on the board, on our list, did Instagram stories; the winemaker [for Ltd.] was in town recently and there just hasn’t been an uptake of it. I was sure the low-alcohol drinks were going to create a movement in the industry across the world, but I was wrong.”

So far in 2024, the wine industry has seen sales slump to a 27-year-low; it is desperate to tap into the explosive success of zero-proof beer – defined as having less than 0.5 per cent ABV – which has seen steady growth since 2018.
However, while brands and winemakers are enthusiastic about zero-proof wines, traditional wine markets remain dubious.
No- and low-alcohol wines – or “nolo wines” – have been heavily promoted.
In 2019, the UK’s Football Association decreed that the winners of the FA Cup tournament would be awarded a non-alcoholic champagne to cater to players of all religions and ages. British retailer Marks & Spencer has been expanding its nolo wine section with releases from both small family businesses and powerhouses like Yellow Tail, Kendall-Jackson, Kim Crawford and Robert Mondavi.
In Hong Kong, the Rosewood Hong Kong hotel brought zero-proof cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc to its Indian restaurant Chaat, following its introduction in 2021 of a non-alcoholic sparkling wine at The Butterfly Room lounge for “guests who don’t want to get drunk in the middle of the day”, explains Julien Peros, the hotel group’s APAC regional director of wine.

Many nolo wines have fewer calories than their alcoholic equivalents, and green attributes such as being organic and vegan. So it is no surprise that their biggest fans are health-conscious Gen Zs as well as circumstantial drinkers – think mothers-to-be, calorie counters, weekday drinkers or those who alternate between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks during a night out.
For Glass, however, this is far from the reality – Gen Z diners at Brut, for example, either choose alcoholic wine or just drink water all evening. She thinks price may be a deterrent – she sells non-alcoholic sparkling wine for HK$480 (US$62) a bottle, for which she has seen few takers, or HK$120 a glass.
Another issue is that there is no globally agreed definition of nolo wine – mainly because the terms “alcoholic beverage” and “wine” mean different things depending on where you are. In Japan, alcoholic beverages start at 1 per cent ABV, while wines in South Africa must be at least 4.5 per cent ABV. With a few exceptions, they must be 8.5 per cent ABV in the European Union.
A likelier reason for the low uptake of nolo wines, Glass says, is that they do not taste good.

Currently, nolo wines is made in two ways.
Under the first, grapes undergo treatment to limit their sugar content, which is the source of alcohol. This could mean an earlier harvest and shorter fermentation time, practices prominent in natural winemaking; or a tweaking of the fermentation process using enzymes and chemicals.
Under the second, the alcohol is spun out of regular-ABV wines through reverse osmosis or vacuum distillation.
However, reducing the alcohol content of wine strips it of inherent aromas, textures and sweetness – the very qualities that make it a sought after drink. Some brands remedy this by reinjecting sugar and other aromas post-production.

“The flavour is a bit funky, in like a natural-wine way,” says Glass. “They’re thin – you can tell there’s something missing from it. The expectation cannot be the same [as] for drinking regular ABV wine.”
Daniel Assef, international sales manager of the US-based Rutherford Wine Company, is struggling to find clients for its nolo chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon wines, which launched early last year.
Its annual production of them is 3,000 cases – a tenth of the company’s total wine production. Like Glass, he blames buyer hesitation on lack of consumer awareness and pricing. Rutherford’s nolo wines retail for US$14.99 per bottle, which is on par with the price of its entry-level, regular-ABV wines.
“The nolo category has been around for 10 years, and it’s finally getting noticed by major players in the market: anyone in California that’s producing 500 to one million cases annually [is] making these wines because they want to jump onto this trend,” he says.
“But the reality is, they are more costly to make. Nolo should retail for more, but it’s already a big challenge to sell without the mark-up.”

Are nolo wines competing with traditional wines?
“Definitely not,” says Corinne Mui Hong-nei – a wine educator and founder of Hong Kong-based wine club CorVino Wine School.
“The wine industry goes to such pains to achieve perfect harmony naturally: we look at the science of soil, the climate, grape variety, you name it. Nolo wine, however, is a manufactured product. It’s a category that appeals to people who aren’t interested in alcohol, or young people who just want to drink something that’s different from their parents.
“It’s the industry’s way of tapping into an audience who want to join in on the fun.”
She sees opportunities for nolo wines in markets with strict religious or food laws – such as the Middle East – and among habitual wine drinkers in the West who would occasionally reach for a nolo alternative.
In Hong Kong, however, wine appreciation is far from ubiquitous, and the city’s convenient and affordable public transport means that, unlike in other places, groups going to dinner do not need a designated driver to stay sober while the rest of them drink alcohol.
Mui says that, until the quality of nolo wines catches up with that of regular-ABV wine, they will struggle to find a place in traditional wine markets.

The technology for producing zero-alcohol wine is fast improving, says Irem Eren, EMEA regional business development and sales director for BevZero – a beverage solutions provider that has been offering third-party de-alcoholising services for decades.
Even three years ago, she remembers tasting nolo wines that reeked of added aromas and “a cooked smell” left from the heat used in the alcohol separation process. In the first quarter of 2025, BevZero will launch a machine that can extract specific aromas to ensure better mimicry of regular wine on the palate and nose.
“This upgrade will be a big game changer in [terms of] quality. We’ll get [a] cleaner, better tasting, healthier and organic product with even less ingredients. The next step is separating the alcohol from the aromas,” she says.
“I bet, in 10 years’ time, nolo wines will be closer to the regular-ABV ones – but as of today, it’s not possible and it’s not the objective of this category.
“Why would you try to make it identical to wine when people are looking for an alternative?”


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In 2022, Camille Glass began serving zero-proof, organic sparkling chardonnay and rosé wine produced by Thomson & Scott at her restaurants and wine bar in Hong Kong. Photo Camille Glass

Camille Glass is the co-founder of Hong Kong restaurants Brut and Pondi and wine bar Crushed. She had hoped that zero-proof and low-alcohol wines would be the next big thing. Photo: Camille Glass

The Rutherford Wine Company in Napa Valley, California, makes nolo chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon wines. Photo: Rutherford Wine Company

Nolo wines are made either by limiting grapes’ sugar content through early harvesting and a shorter fermentation time, or by treating wine to reduce or eliminate its alcohol content. Photo: Getty Images

Diners at Brut in Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong, where nolo wines have found few takers. Photo: Brut

Irem Eren works for BevZero, a beverage solutions provider that has been offering third-party de-alcoholising services for decades. Photo BevZero

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Pricey, a thin texture, a ‘funky’ flavour – low-alcohol and zero-alcohol wines have not lived up to expectations. Can they be improved?


Non-alcoholic and low-alcohol, or ‘nolo’ wines, were supposed to be the next big thing. Industry insiders dissect what went wrong, from their flavour and price to a lack of interest from Gen Z drinkers.


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Non-alcoholic and low-alcohol wines were going to be big, but they flopped. What happened?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Pricey, a thin texture, a ‘funky’ flavour – low-alcohol and zero-alcohol wines have not lived up to expectations. Can they be improved?

Pricey, a thin texture, a ‘funky’ flavour – low-alcohol and zero-alcohol wines have not lived up to expectations. Can they be improved?