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Winemakers are working to capitalise on the growing popularity of zero-alcohol wine, as more Australians choose to curb the booze beyond Dry July.Key points:

• Like meat substitutes, wine drinkers can be turned off alcohol-free alternatives because it doesn’t taste the same
• An Adelaide researcher has been investigating how to replicate the wine experience without the alcohol 
• Alcohol-free wine is a growing space for winemakers and restaurants 

However, one of the biggest turn-offs for wine drinkers has been that alcohol-free versions simply do not taste the same.Australian Wine Research Institute research scientist Wes Pearson has spent the past two years conducting sensory research on how to make the flavours and sensations of non-alcoholic wine as similar to the alcoholic version as possible.Mr Pearson said while no or low-alcoholic beer had tasted close to the full-strength version for some time, wine had lagged.He said the reason for that was because there were fewer ingredients to play with in winemaking.”You’re working with grapes, fermented grape juice,” he said.But Mr Pearson said non-alcoholic wines were a lot better than they used to be, especially sparkling and white varieties.”They often have a tiny bit of sugar in them, and they’ve got bubbles in them, so all of those things can add to that experience of replacing the alcohol,” he said.”So those are good tools that you can work with.” Wes Pearson is researching how to improve the likeness of non-alcoholic wine.(ABC News: Evelyn Manfield)Mr Pearson said red wine was particularly tricky to replicate because of its typically higher alcohol concentration.”That would be the holy grail, to make a shiraz with no alcohol in it that tastes like a traditional shiraz,” he said.To make alcohol-free wine, producers typically remove the ethanol through a spinning cone technology, which extracts alcohol using steam.But removing alcohol adds an extra step and therefore cost, which consumers can find hard to justify.So, to keep the cost down, producers often use cheaper grapes, Mr Pearson said.”If you’re starting with poor materials you’ll end up with a poor finished product,” he said.He said his research would be expanding at the end of the year to look at what grape varieties worked best and what could be done on the vineyard to help the alcohol removal process later on.Mr Pearson said the research would help smaller Australian wine producers get the insights needed to make the best products possible.Non-alcoholic wines rising in popularitySteering this research has been the wine industry’s desire to improve their non-alcoholic offerings due to increasing consumer demand.Wolf Blass, in South Australia’s Barossa Valley, has won plenty of awards for its red wines.  Kerrin Petty says customers are keen to try non-alcoholic wines, as long as the flavour is there.(ABC News: Evelyn Manfield)Chief Supply Officer Kerrin Petty said zero-alcohol wines were a growing space for the company.”A third of our consumers would choose low-alcohol wine if they could find it and the flavour was at the quality level they expect,” he said.”So that’s really the chase for us, to make sure the quality that we’re delivering is in line with our consumers’ expectation.”Mr Petty said feedback from consumers indicated people wanted a non-alcoholic beverage, rather than a soft drink, that they could consume on a special occasion.”So, when people are out socialising and other people are drinking and they don’t want to drink for whatever reason, that alternative is just important,” he said.Diners driving demand for non-alcoholic drinksLeigh Street, in Adelaide’s CBD, is a popular dining strip filled, but not all potential visitors to the street want to drink alcohol.Shobosho, a restaurant and bar on Leigh Street, has potential customers contacting the restaurant ahead of time to enquire about their non-alcoholic offerings.Venue manager Charlotte Martin said the restaurant had expanded its zero-alcohol wine list to five different options, along with mocktails and non-alcoholic beers, in the past six months.”We really noticed people asking for it a lot more so we decided to start exploring those options and seeing what we could provide for people,” she said. Low-alcohol red wines can be challenging to produce.(ABC News: Evelyn Manfield)DrinkWise chief executive Simon Strahan said research from his organisation showed there were a range of reasons people were opting for non-alcoholic alternatives.”Certainly, people want to be able to drive, and we found around about 28 per cent of people use that as their primary reason,” he said.”But overall, we saw people wanting to cut back on alcohol intake, have lower calorie options, lower carb options [and] making sure they could wake up the next day and feel refreshed.”It seems unusual, but 18-to-44-year-olds are twice as likely to consume zero and low-strength alcohol products, versus those aged over 45, based on the DrinkWise research.”Pivot after Chinese tariffs imposedAustralian Wine and Grape chief executive, Tony Battaglene, said the push to diversify the industry’s products was also important because of how punishing the Chinese tariffs had been.”It’s been a really difficult time,” he said.”So, the last two years, when we lost that $1.2 billion market overnight, people have rapidly looked to try and diversify markets … [to] Korea, Thailand and Hong Kong.”But he said no-alcohol and low-alcohol products were also a significant part of diversifying.”By far the biggest growth category for consumers has been no and low-alcohol and we’re seeing young consumers, in particular, who are moving towards these options,” he said. .