With increasing consumer demand for lower alcohol wines, the UK wine trade got together to debate the key issues involved. Unfortunately, consumer opinion of lower alcohol wines is pretty poor at the moment with Dan Jago, head wine honcho at Tesco, even saying they had ‘leper status’ (see my you tube wine channel for his speech.)
Clearly there is work to do. Currently consumers have a low quality expectation of lower alcohol wines and don’t have any real knowledge where they can be found on the shelves. More encouragingly, 42% of regular wine drinkers said they would be prepared to buy low alcohol wines if the wines on offer were of equal quality to wines at ‘normal’ alcohol levels, according to new research by major importer PLB.
Unfortunately the term ‘lower alcohol’ and ‘reduced alcohol’ wines are not defined so they’re not technically legal, so you could say lower alcohol wines is a category that doesn’t exist in the eyes of the law. This is an issue the wine industry admits it needs to work on – we need a term to be able to explain to the consumer what we are actually talking about. And in terms of lower alcohol, there’s no definition of what a lower alcohol wine is – is it a 9% German Kabinett of a 12% Australian Chardonnay? Jago added, ‘We need to clarify what we are allowed to say and clarify the language of lower alcohol.’
In terms of technical know-how, there are plenty of technologies you can use – from reverse osmosis to spinning cone (my you tube channel has an interview with Tony Dann on spinning cone technology). However, Jago added they were ‘Frankenstein’s monster to a lot of people. The idea you can technically alter wine – wine should be a completely natural product, totally uninterfered, is still for many people the way in which they view this product.’
However, the message was these wines need to be brought into the mainstream and marketed as a decent drink first and a low alcohol choice second. All the major buyers were keen to see the big powerful brands bringing out low alcohol wines rather than small producers on the periphery. Julian Dyer, senior buyer at Sainsbury’s added, Let’s see if we can work on the mainstream and get the brands to work on lower alcohol wines.’
