Drink up, drive home - Max Allen, for the AFR
High-end restaurants are responding to the demand for quality alcohol-free drink.
Max Allen, AFR
August 2020
SOMMELIER PENNY VINE IS struggling to keep up with the demand for low and no-alcohol drinks at leading Melbourne restaurant Cutler & Co. Particularly since the pandemic hit. Over the past two troubled years, according to Vine, diners have developed an insatiable thirst for booze-free drinking options.
“We put our first list of low and no-alcohol drinks together in 2013,” she says. “For the first six years, we had slow but steady growth in interest. But that completely changed in 2020: even though we were closed for seven months, we sold almost as much as we had the whole of the previous year.
“And in the first six months of this year, when we’ve only been open four days a week [because of lockdowns and restrictions], we’ve already doubled what we sold in 2020. That’s huge.”
Vine, pictured above, was one of the speakers at a tasting and masterclass organised in July by Sommeliers Australia. It was the first in-person event Sommeliers Australia had held for 18 months. And the fact that the topic was low-and-no alcohol drinks speaks volumes about how important the category is becoming to the on-premise sector – particularly restaurants.
As well as pandemic-fuelled concerns about “healthy” or “mindful” drinking, one of the reasons for the growing interest in booze-free booze is the fact that the products taste much better – and are available in a wider range of styles, from beer to wine and spirits – than even five years ago
“Sommeliers have historically spent a lot of time and labour crafting really intricate non-alcoholic options themselves,” says Vine. “To be able to have more good options now ready-made for us is another benefit.”
Arguably the best Australian alcohol-free drinks brand to have emerged in the past couple of years, NON, was conceived by Melbourne entrepreneur Aaron Trotman and ex-Noma chef William Wade in a fine-dining environment.
“Aaron was travelling across Europe with his wife, going to fancy Michelin restaurants,” says NON’s general manager, Katie Shiff. “His wife doesn’t drink, so she would always order the non-alcoholic beverage pairing. At the Clove Club in London, Aaron realised there was an amazing opportunity for gastronomically-inclined beverages that sommeliers and chefs can pair with unique dishes on a menu.”
Shiff says that unlike most drinks in this category, that are brewed or fermented as normal and then have the alcohol taken out, each drink in the NON range is built from the ground up, much as a chef would create a fine-dining dish.
“When we’re developing a new flavour,” she says, “we identify different ingredients we can use – the florals, the tannins, the acidity – in order to take the palate on a similar journey as you would with wine. It doesn’t taste like wine, but it gives you a similar experience of tasting a really beautiful wine.”
The newest addition to the NON line-up, reviewed here, is a great illustration of this.
Penny Vine offered another insight into the growing taste for alcohol-free drinks such as NON – and the popular spritz she makes at Cutler & Co and sister wine bar, Marion, using the Aperol-like Italian orange spirit from Lyre’s, another new Australian non-alc brand enjoying success.
“There’s a general shift in palates globally. People are moving away from heavier, fuller-bodied, higher-alcohol wines. The shift from shiraz to pinot that we’re seeing very much opens people up to lighter styles of drinks, making it an easier side-step to non-alcoholic. This is definitely something I’ve witnessed table-side.”