CAN YOU REMOVE THE ALCOHOL FROM WINE – WITHOUT REMOVING THE TASTE?
I vividly remember a line from the Hugh Johnson Wine Companion more than 25 years ago, when I was a biochemistry student already fascinated by wine: “…the Germans are so good at filtering wines - they might even filter out the taste!”
And today, the Nett winery has figured out how to remove alcohol while retaining much of the taste!
My 2026 enlightenment came when I met Christian Nett at a Singapore wine fair earlier this year. Expecting little, I tried his wines and discovered something remarkable: fresh, lively, enjoyable wines, with recognisable grape varieties and character - just minus the alcohol.
So, what else is typically lost when alcohol is removed from finished wine – and how can modern technology preserve what makes wine taste like wine?
Alcohol adds body, warmth and mouthfeel, and affects sweetness, acidity and aroma perception. Aromas can also be lost during dealcoholisation. Nett starts with high-quality wine produced exclusively from estate-grown grapes, then alcohol is gently removed under vacuum at low temperature, and SOLOS Aroma Recovery technology is used to capture volatile aromas from the distillate and return them to the final wine. Much of the original aromatic fingerprint can be retained, notably in Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, and Gewürztraminer.
SUGAR & WHAT DOES “DRY” MEAN WITHOUT ALCOHOL?
Nett REVERSE dealcoholised Riesling:
0.2% alcohol + 16 g sugar = ~70 kcal/750 mL | acidity 8.1 g/L
Traditional dry Nett Riesling:
12% alcohol + 3.7 g sugar = ~510 kcal/750 mL | acidity 7.8 g/L
Surprisingly, BOTH WINES TASTE SIMILARLY DRY! Acidity, fruit and the lack of alcohol change the sensory balance.
Dry-tasting dealcoholised wine can have ~20 g/L sugar, versus ~100 g/L in classic Coke and 90 g/L in orange juice. This Riesling has just 1/7th the calories of its conventional counterpart (more in another post).
NETT WINES IN SINGAPORE
We then held a small tasting, where the Nett whites in particular scored similarly to high-quality conventional wines. Indeed, several de-alcoholised Nett wines have earned professional ratings of 91–95 points. So we decided to bring these wines to Singapore, and our current portfolio includes nine alcohol-free and six traditional wines, across a broad range of grape varieties and styles.
Indeed, 25 years later, some Germans figured out how to filter out the alcohol without filtering out the taste...
Christian Nett is serious about making really good alcohol-free wines!
