Non-alcoholic wines vs. the real deal
By Mary Malik
In Mimi’s April edition, we told you about the Northern Ohio Wine Guild’s May competition, a blind taste test comparing non-alcoholic (NA) and alcoholic wines. Well, the results are in—and they might surprise you.
“The Guild conducted a blind tasting of several NA wines alongside their alcoholic counterparts,” Jim Sperk of the Northern Ohio Wine Guild says. “And just to make things a little more interesting, we made it a face-off between seasoned Guild members (veterans) and casual wine-drinking friends and family (novices), to determine which group could more accurately deduce which wines were NA.”
And now, the Northern Ohio Wine Guild has tallied the results and discovered a few twists. There were 10 wines in five categories: Pinot Gris, light rosés, darker rosés, Pinot Noir and Cabernet.
“Our ‘judges’ were told there were five NA wines and five alcoholic wines,” Jim says. “That was true. But in a devious twist, both of the light rosé wines were NA, while both of the darker rosés had low alcohol levels. In each of the other categories, we played it straight with one NA and one regular wine.”
Jim reports that one of the veteran judges was able to detect the ruse and scored a nine out of 10 correctly. Overall, the veterans’ score was 76% correct while the novices had a 51% correct score.
“The fact that neither group scored higher demonstrates how much NA wines have improved,” Jim says. “However, it must be noted that the NA wines used in this test were carefully chosen to exclude sweet samples, which are very prominent in the NA market.”
Jim says that later when it came to pairing the wines with food, the NA wines seemed a bit less satisfying but none of the judges could explain why.
“It could be the taste didn’t complement the food as well,” Jim says. “Or perhaps a bit of alcohol is needed to cleanse the palate between bites. That’s a question for another day, and another competition.”
For information about the Northern Ohio Wine Guild, contact Jim Sperk at tinymoonwines@usa.net.