Research shows that more than 40 percent of consumers are drinking less alcohol, following a report from the Department of Health and Human Services that show any amount of alcohol increases the risk of several types of cancer. The news was enough to make a wine drinker cry — then hide along with cigarette smokers on the back stoop.
Everyone needs to judge their risk of cancer based on their personal health and they need to decide if the risk is worth it. Many will just give up wine and die of something else. Others could decide the risk is no greater than crossing a New York City street.
I’m not giving up my wine — but I am consuming less. If you’re in the same fix, you’re looking for alternatives.
I’ve been tasting a lot of non-alcoholic wines lately in search of the impossible. Based on what I have tasted so far, there is no substitute for wine unless you count sweet fruit juice as one of them. I don’t.
As the industry struggles to find the perfect recipe, the consumer is left with two basic choices: alcohol free wine and dealcoholized wine. The latter is much closer to wine because the process starts with alcohol and keeps much of the aroma, acid and flavor.
Alcohol can be removed in a number of ways. There is reverse osmosis in which it is filtered out. You can boil the wine much like you do when you cook with it. And a winemaker can remove alcohol with a centrifuge of fixed and spinning cones. The latter method is often used when a crop is high in sugar and the alcohol level is off the chart. Think zinfandel.
Look at the label and you can discover if the wine was dealcoholized. “Alcohol free” means that it is just a fruit juice and likely not a good one at that.
Personally, I’m turning to flavored water if I’m not drinking wine.