You may think, 'Brother, its name is grape juice', but it's not. We know that there is a demand for non-alcoholic wine among consumers due to various reasons such as being against alcohol, not being able to drink alcohol for sanitary reasons, or wanting to drink wine but avoiding it because of alcohol. Additionally, sales statistics show that the consumption of non-alcoholic wine is on a steady increase. Then, instead of rejecting it, it would be beneficial to look closely and learn.

First a quick reminder. The chemical process that turns grape must into wine is called fermentation. Fermentation is when wine yeast cells, a single-celled bacterium, eat the sugar in grape juice for nutrition and remove alcohol as waste. When this process is completed, sugar turns into alcohol and grape juice is now called wine.

How does non-alcoholic wine come about when the basis of wine is the conversion of sugar into alcohol? Several ways have been developed for this process. Heat plays an important role in the fermentation process of wine. Alcohol evaporates at a lower degree due to its volatile nature. If non-alcoholic wine is to be produced, it is kept at a low temperature before boiling to ensure that the alcohol is heated and evaporated. The advantage of performing this process at low temperature is to ensure that the aroma and taste structure of the wine is preserved as much as possible without any change. One of the other methods is to perform a mechanical alcohol filtering process, and the other is to separate and remove the alcohol through a two-stage process called 'rotary cone'. In the rotary cone system, wine is first produced by fermentation, then a pre-treatment is carried out on the basis of centrifugation that preserves the aroma and taste identity of the wine, the alcohol in the remaining liquid is evaporated in the second stage, and the wine, reunited with its physical properties, meets wine lovers with its new format that preserves its identity but does not contain alcohol.

Most non-alcoholic wines have a higher sugar content. In this respect, it is not easy for them to please normal wine consumers. It is possible to say that the most successful non-alcoholic wine group consists of Prosecco and Riesling examples. Prosecco is a wine whose second fermentation takes place in tanks. In this respect, the original has lower alcohol content and slightly higher sugar content so both alcoholic and non-alcoholic products are close to each other with their physical properties. White wines made from Riesling grapes also have similar properties, and their non-alcoholic wines are closer to the original than other grape samples.

There is no producer producing non-alcoholic wine in our country yet. None of the wine-importing companies have shown interest in non-alcoholic wine yet. Another uncertainty is what kind of customs duty non-alcoholic wines will be subject to. As soon as non-alcoholic wines begin to appear in our country, we will start to include them in the WAYANA Wine Menu. We think that non-alcoholic wines will have an important place in making wine reach a wider audience.