A Cure for Dry January
Non-alcoholic beverages are often dull and formulaic. Handcrafted, booze-free elixirs from the natural wine scene are the future.
Over the past decade, I’ve created wine lists for a handful of restaurants in Paris, as well as one in Monaco. With each new project, the first order I place is never for wine. It’s always for Beaujolais vigneron Romain des Grottes’ “Antidote,” a sparkling, alcohol-free infusion of biodynamically-farmed gamay juice, apple juice, thyme, and sundry other herbs.
Why? Because French law technically requires restaurateurs to offer non-alcoholic beverages alongside alcoholic beverages. If one wishes to follow the letter of the law, one must also display at least ten (!) samples of non-alcoholic beverages prominently within the bar or restaurant. In practice, this usually amounts to state-enforced advertising for Coca-Cola, Orangina, Perrier, and so forth, something I seek to avoid at all costs.
This gets at the problem with most alcoholic-free beverages - the problem anyone doing Dry January has been contending with all month. Preventing the natural transformation of sugar into alcohol requires stabilization in some form or another. This makes alcohol-free beverages inherently better-adapted to mass-production than actual wine. What mass-produced beverages gain in cost-efficiency and regularity, however, they tend to lose in personality, with the result that most alcohol-free drinks are a little dull and standardized.
Hence my enthusiasm for des Grottes’ “Antidote,” and other small-batch, organic, independently-produced, non-alcoholic beverages, like the ones pictured above: a sparkling elderflower drink by Anjou vigneron Romain Verger, and a rose-infused sparkling birch sap by book restorer Jan Klimeš of EUFORIA in the Czech Republic.
THE ANTIDOTE
Romain des Grottes began producing “Antidote” in 2016 - for his kids, he says.
“It didn’t take off immediately. Retailers were timid, at first. But they came around to it because they realized there was a real demand,” says des Grottes.
In 2021, he produced 13,500 bottles. It’s made by pasteurizing fresh gamay must (to kill yeast and bacteria), then blending it with an infusion of fifteen estate-grown herbs. Des Grottes then engages a contractor to add CO2 artificially. The result is a sweet, sparkling herbal beverage with just a suggestion of the rusticity and volatility of a “real” pétillant-naturel.
“I find it nice to break the rules and challenge expectations: to be a vigneron and not make wine,” says des Grottes. “I’m a paysan, above all.”
More about Romain des Grottes in my 2016 blog post.
PETILLANT DE SUREAU
I keep “Antidote” in stock at home. But often I crave something less sweet. During lockdown in 2020, I discovered a brisk, sparkling elderflower drink by Romain Verger, the Anjou vigneron behind Le Thio Noots. It’s a blend of spring water, elderflower, organic Corsican lemon juice, and a touch of organic sugar, that undergoes alcoholic fermentation in bottle, arriving at less than 1% ABV. (While legally it is non-alcoholic, it might not be appropriate for recovering alcoholics.)
Like des Grottes, Verger considers himself a paysan first, vigneron second. He’s experimented with producing piquette and elderflower drinks since he was a child, but first began commercializing his non-alcoholic beverages in 2019. In addition to elderflower, he makes sparkling non-alcoholic beverages with mint and fennel, and lime-blossom and lemon balm.
“I do it rather intuitively,” he says. “For me, it’s an activity that is complementary to viticulture. Since we’re often frosting, it’s a way to avoid to putting all the eggs in the same basket. And it helps to find a personal balance, between wine, which contains alcohol, and things that don’t.”
Subscribers can read more about Romain Verger and Le Thio Noots here.
EUFORIA
Of all the handcrafted non-alcoholic beverages I’ve encountered, the most promising - in terms of its allure, its seasonality, and (for retailers) its justifiably high-ish price point - are those based on birch sap. Available just a few weeks in the spring, it’s extracted by tapping the rising sap of birch trees with a small tube.
We had just emerged from a swim in Austrian vigneron Franz Strohmeier’s vineyard pond last August, when my friend the Czech natural wine impresario Jan Čulik produced from his bag an invigorating bottle of birch sap infused with lees of frankovka and cabernet sauvignon. The wine-tinted, spritzy, alcohol-free elixir was the work of Czech book restorer and birch sap innovator Jan Klimeš, who sells his work under the apt label EUFORIA.
In addition to lees from his friend Milan Nestarec (for whom he has also designed some wine labels for limited cuvées), Klimeš produces birch saps infused with elements ranging from lilac and rose to oolong tea and hops. The beverages are unpasteurized, sugarless, alcohol-free, and produced without preservatives. He produced 6000 bottles in 2021.
“In my experience, the sap in the bottle matures for several years, like wine,” says Klimeš, who I finally met last weekend at Čulik’s Bottled Alive natural wine fair in the town of Tabor. “They’re protected by their own lactic fermentation.”
Drinking the EUFORIA birch saps gives its own peculiarly bracing, energizing, yet alcohol-free buzz. As Čulik joked, the evening before his salon, “It’s my cocaine!”
For subscribers, a first-ever English language interview with EUFORIA’s Jan Klimeš, and an account of Jan Čulik’s Bottled Alive natural wine salon in Tabor earlier this month.
A CURE FOR DRY JANUARY
Bottles like these show that “alcohol-free” doesn’t have to be synonymous with “mass-produced” or “corporate” or “loaded with sugar.” The category itself has immense potential for an artisanship all its own. For small-scale natural vignerons, whose livelihoods are subject to the caprices of weather and fermentations, artisanal alcohol-free beverages can also represent a valuable source of revenue.
As long the rest of us start demanding more than Diet Coke.
FURTHER READING
A first-ever English interview with Euforia’s Jan Klimeš.
An account of the Bottled Alive natural wine salon in Tabor.
My 2016 blog post on Romain des Grottes.
Bert Celce’s 2020 post on Romain de Grottes at Wine Terroirs.
Was this exploration of artisanal non-alcoholic beverages from the natural wine scene useful or inspiring? There’s more exclusive coverage from inside the world of natural wine - interviews, reports, tasting round-ups, and more - for paid subscribers.