“Why do restaurants and chefs think they know better than their customers when it comes to alcohol-free wine and beer?”

It provoked a few responses.

One person replied “perhaps because they do, food and drink being their area of professional expertise?”

This is the same sort of thinking the leads to chefs refusing to cook a steak to the customer’s liking because the chef knows best.

Well, maybe the chef does know best, from a technical perspective, but from a taste perspective the only thing that matters is the taste-buds of the paying customer.

The same applies to drink.

If a customer wants an alcohol-free beer or wine, that’s what they want.

They don’t want water.

They don’t want cola.

And they don’t want yet another orange juice.

They want a good de-alcoholised Merlot, a fruity de-alcoholised Chardonnay or a great alcohol-free wheat beer.

Other people replied agreeing that they found it hard to find alcohol-free drinks when they went out, and they wanted the choice too.

One woman said she often phoned up before hand to find out if the restaurant sold any alcohol-free wine or beer.

Her husband doesn’t drink, and he isn’t alone. There are lots people like him around the country.

Pregnant women. Dieters. People on medication. People in recovery. Drivers. Workers on call. People of certain faiths.

There are lots of reasons people don’t drink.

As I said in my reply to her “yes & many people base their decisions on availability of alcohol-free for one or more in the group. no alcohol-free = lost sales”

We’ve had restaurants tell us they don’t sell alcohol-free wines because they don’t think they are good enough.

The chances are they haven’t tasted an alcohol-free wine since Eisberg, 20 years ago. We don’t sell Eisberg.

But even if they have tasted a good alcohol-free wine and still don’t like it, that isn’t the point.

We are testament to the fact people who drink alcohol-free wines like them.

We’ve been selling them for nearly 4 years. We sell a lot of them.

It’s like a restaurant refusing to sell anything but meat.

No one expects all restaurants to sell only vegetarian food. But they do expect a vegetarian option.

If you were a vegetarian in a group of meat eaters and the restaurant had nothing to offer you except beans on toast, you’d be understandably annoyed.

Especially if your fellow diners were tucking into the finest steak or lobster.

But when it comes to drinks, all we are offered are the beans on toast – the water, the orange juice, the cola.

We aren’t 10 years old. We don’t want soft-drinks.

We are adults. We want an adult drink with our adult food.

Is that really asking too much?

I have a number of personal favourites but what I choose to drink depends on what mood I’m in and, over time, I might move from one to the other. I also go through phases of what type of drink I prefer. Currently I’m drinking mainly red wines. In the summer I may start drinking more whites and cider, and sometimes I’ll go through a beer phase. I’m sure many of you do the same.

My favourite red wines are currently Bonne Nouvelle Rouge and Romance en Rouge, both of which are dry, and Bonne Nouvelle Merlot which is nice and fruity.

Bonne Nouvelle Rouge

Bonne Nouvelle Rouge is a really nice, solid, dry red wine. It’s very drinkable and a perfect bottle to compliment a meal – especially meat – or to drink with cheese.

Romance en Rouge is slightly acidic, which really suits my tastes, although Christine finds it too tart for her palate (her favourite red is Weinkonig Merlot by the way).

The Bonne Nouvelle Merlot is delicious but it’s a tad thin. If it had the consistency of the Bonne Nouvelle Rouge it would be near perfect. All wines benefit from a swirl in a large glass to release the flavours and aromas but probably none more so in our current range than this merlot. A good swirl really sets the flavours free. If I open a bottle, it’s guaranteed to be finished that evening.

We had a new batch of Sutter Fre Merlot in this week and it’s changed from the 2007 Merlot to the 2008 Merlot. I’ve never been a fan of the Sutter wines, I find them too sweet, but many of our customers love them.

We’ll be running down the 2007 stock shortly and from then on it will be the new 2008 wine being shipped. I tasted some before and, whilst it’s still too sweet for me, I prefer the new one to the 2007.

If you are a fan of the 2007 merlot I’d suggest you order quickly before stocks go. And when you next re-order for the 2008 Sutter (which I’m sure you’ll love), why not try a few other reds too? Don’t forget, you don’t have to buy all the same wine, you can buy any of our wines by the bottle so you could buy 10 Sutter and add a couple of others to try.

And if you order twelve bottles or more, you can benefit from our free delivery service.

Why not try our Alcohol-Free Diet Calculator to get an idea of just how many calories you could save by switching to alcohol-free wine and beer!

De-alcoholised wines are made as normal alcoholic wines, going through exactly the same processes until the final stage, when the alcohol is gently removed (leaving up to 0.5% alcohol-by-volume). Up until that point, they are simply alcoholic wines, the same you would see in any supermarket or wine cellar.

Some customers see the ingredients and presume they are all additions to the wine as part of the de-alcoholisation process and that de-alcoholised wine is somehow different from alcoholic wine (apart from, of course, the lack of alcohol).

But the reality is alcoholic wines can contain over 50 different additions to the basic wine which, because of an exemption to the law, do not have to be listed on the label.

De-alcoholised wines, because they are less than 0.5% alcohol-by-volume, fall under food labelling regulations and can’t take advantage of this exemption. This means we have to list all ingredients in English (which is why on some of our wines we have to put our own back labels on them).

However, the Food Standards Agency is now seeking an end to this exemption for alcoholic wine, which should at least mean consumers will know what is in their alcoholic wine, as they already do with their de-alcoholised wine, and can make an informed decision on which wines to drink. This Telegraph article makes interesting reading about just what is allowed in wine at the moment without having to be listed on the labels.

By the way, ascorbic acid is Vitamin C and is added to wines, usually with Sulphur Dioxide, to prevent oxidation and keep the wine fresh.