Decanting Digest: Rounding out Dry January with three more non-alcoholic bevvies

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This Dry January, we’ve looked at three non-alcoholic wines from Gruvi and three more from German winemaker Leitz.

While the month is coming to a close, it’s clear that the zero-alcohol movement is here to stay. To meet this demand, restaurants are putting more effort into creative mocktails, alcohol-free beverages are being offered on wine tours, and there’s even an entire zero-alcohol bottle shop that has opened up in St. Catharines. It’s called Bushel & Peck, and it’s where we found two of the three beverages we’re looking at here in our final Dry January instalment for 2023. 

With Canada’s new alcohol safety guidelines and the expanding options available on the market, will you choose alcohol-free beverages more often? Let us know in the comments below or on social media at Decanting Digest.

Benjamin Bridge Vineyards Piquette Wine-style Beverage
$6.00 per 250 mL can at Bushel & Peck

This zero-alcohol wine-style beverage comes from Benjamin Bridge Vineyards in Nova Scotia. Benjamin Bridge makes some exceptional wines, but in this wine-style beverage there’s no wine involved: instead it’s made from ingredients like citric acid, grape extract, hops, and sea salt. The winery describes this as “a creative and unprecedented craft option to industrially dealcoholized wines … (n)ot identical to wine, this new sensory experience is to be discovered for its own unique deliciousness.” Unfortunately, in our view, calling this wine-style is a stretch. There’s plenty of citrus on the nose, and then the flavour tastes like fresh glacier water that’s been melted, carbonated, and then lightly spritzed with citrus. It’s unique, but we’re not inspired to reach for it in place of an actual glass of wine.
Score: 4/10

Somerset Orchards Pippin Alcohol-free Cider
$4.00 per 355 mL can at Bushel & Peck (also available directly from West Avenue Cider House)

Of all the non-alcoholic beverages out there meant to replace their alcoholic counterparts, cider best fits the bill. As far as flavours, tartness, and acidity are concerned, the apples themselves do as much of the heavy lifting as the alcohol does. West Avenue Cider House, located near Hamilton, produces this zero-alcohol cider with heritage apples. The cidery sells it for $3.00 per can but is currently sold out; we found it at Bushel & Peck for $4.00 each. This cider has no sugar added, but it also doesn’t undergo a fermentation process, which is what removes a lot of the sugar in a hard cider. As a result, each can contains 40 grams of sugar, which is more than what you’d find in a typical can of soda. The apple aroma and flavour are pure and pleasant on this with a sharper tartness coming in on the finish. It’s very sweet for our taste, but if you like a sweet cider, you’ll enjoy it. Just be mindful of the high sugar content.
Score: 6/10

Sober Carpenter De-alcoholized Artisanal Cider
$3.99 per 473 mL can at Healthy Planet (also available elsewhere)

Sober Carpenter is a Montreal-based producer of several non-alcoholic beers as well as this craft cider. In the case of the cider, though, it’s not zero-alcohol but de-alcoholized: this is put through fermentation, and then the alcohol that’s produced is removed at the end of the process. This allows some of the sugar to be fermented out of the product, and while it does leave a trace amount of residual alcohol, the result is better for it. The aroma is complex with layers of apple, elderflower, and pear, and the palate starts off dry and acidic before revealing a delicate honeyed sweetness with light floral notes. The flavour starts bold and drops off very quickly, but that’s forgivable since this is drinkable enough to hold its own in any line-up of ciders, alcoholic or otherwise.
Score: 7.5/10