What my sober friends tell me they miss the most about drinking isn’t always the booze itself, but rather the shared rituals. Happy hours after work with friends, boozy brunches on Sundays. New Year’s Eve toasts. Even for those who don’t hit the bottle hard, ringing in the first moments of the new year with a solitary glass of sparking wine is a tradition as wholesome as it gets (when it comes to alcohol).
There’s more room for (and less scoffing over) non-alcoholic drinks nowadays, though, and if you’ve been despairing that there’s no room for you in this New Year’s Eve tradition, I’ve got news for you. There are new online retailers and winemakers specializing in non-alcoholic wines, both sparkling and still, and you still have time to get your hands on some before the year runs out.
Really? Zero percent alcohol?
Well, not necessarily. There may be trace amounts of alcohol. “For a drink to be legally non-alcoholic, it has to be 0.5% alcohol by volume or less,” writes The Zero Proof, a non-alcoholic wine retailer I’ve just recently bought from. “While this doesn’t make it totally alcohol free, it does mean it is impossible to experience any intoxication or other psychoactive effects from alcohol. For context, a slice of sourdough bread or a ripe banana has more alcohol by volume than any of our drinks!”
So, if it’s (mostly) alcohol-free, is it really wine? Yes—it’s real wine—albeit wine that’s been dealcoholized. What’s that, you say, as you lean forward in your seat to learn a new vocabulary word. It’s exactly what it sounds like. An extra step in the winemaking process, after the grapes have been grown, then pressed, then fermented, and then aged.
Most wine dealcoholization takes place through vacuum distillation, according to The Zero Proof. Once the supplier has got their finished wine, alcohol and all indistinguishable from a typical boozy wine, they reduce the pressure in the container via a vacuum and gently heat it up until the alcohol and water separate. Alcohol has a lower boiling point than water, so this method boils off the alcohol while leaving the rest of the wine in a liquid state.
“With experience, this method can be used to capture most of the volatile aroma compounds that can be added back to the dealcoholized wine, ensuring a more flavorful, aromatic non-alcoholic wine that retains more of its wine-like character,” says BevZero, a supplier of dealcoholization equipment and services.
The Zero Proof does add that some wine producers add grape must (whole, crushed grapes), grape juice, sugar, or (vaguely) other “flavoring agents” to bulk the body of the wine back up or balance the flavor.
where can i buy this non-alcoholic champagne!?
Unsurprisingly, there’s a section on The Zero Proof specifically for sparkling wines, if you want to be festive for New Year’s Eve. Rules for shipping alcohol beverages online vary widely by the type of alcoholic beverage and the state, since it’s not federally mandated but rather state mandated. Luckily for you, since this is non-alcoholic wine, you don’t have to juggle those restrictions. The Zero Proof ships to 48 states. Hawaii and Alaska, I’m sorry to tell you, you’re out of luck.
You may try your local stores. The megastores I’ve checked out, such as Total Wine & More, generally have paltry selections of dealcoholized wine. If you don’t enjoy the hunt of visiting every local wine shop in person, you’ll have better luck buying off a website that specializes in shipping non-alcoholic wines.
I’ve yet to try the following, but other online retailers who specialize in non-alcoholic wines (and for some, other non-alcoholic beverages) and who have large selections include ProofNoMore, No & Low, and Boisson.
Before all the oenophiles come at me for referring to sparking wine, in general and broadly, as champagne, a short history lesson—with semantics! Champagne is a protected designation of origin under European Union law (and has been protected, in various forms, since 1845).
Only sparkling wines produced in the Champagne region of France and using méthode champenoise. And I’ve yet to see a non-alcoholic cham… sparkling wine that fits the bill. Plus, there are loopholes to that protected designation of origin. While it’s traditional for people to toast the New Year with a glass of champagne, many use any glass of sparkling wine, alcoholic or not. If you’re not a stickler for stuffy tradition, neither are we.
So if you decide to crack open a sparkling riesling, ruby rosé, chardonnay, or brut, you can tip your glass back without feeling tipsy when lay your head down to sleep for the first time in 2025. If your New Year’s resolution is to explore sobriety, then the first second of the new year would be as good a time to start as any.
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