Why Most Non-Alcoholic Wine Misses the Point - A Winemaker's Perspective

People sometimes assume making non-alcoholic wine must be easy. You start with wine. Remove the alcohol. Done. I wish it worked that way.

I’ve spent most of my career thinking about vineyards. Soil types, farming decisions, elevation changes that show up in the glass years later. The usual winemaker obsessions. When you’re working with traditional wine, the goal is usually restraint, don’t mess it up, basically. The vineyard already did the heavy lifting.

Non-alcoholic wine flips that idea completely on its head.

Take the alcohol away and something strange happens. The wine is still there, technically, but the structure collapses. Body disappears. Texture thins out. What used to feel complete now feels hollow. The first time you taste it after dealcoholization it’s a little shocking, honestly. Like walking into a house where the walls have been removed but the framing is still standing.

You can see what it used to be. But it doesn’t work anymore. That’s where the real work begins.

The Moment Missing Thorn Became Interesting

I didn’t come to this project thinking I should make non-alcoholic wine.

Stephanie Honig had been exploring a few ideas around the category. At one point, she was looking at non-alcoholic wine as a possible base for another concept she was developing. This was Napa Valley after all, and a few years ago a lot of people were experimenting with new directions for wine.

That particular idea didn’t stick. But something else did. The wine itself started to get interesting.

What if non-alcoholic wine could actually be good? Not “good for non-alcoholic.” Just… good. That question was enough to get my attention. Winemakers are kind of wired for puzzles like that.

The Problem Most NA Wine Never Solves

A lot of bottles in this category follow a pretty simple path.

Make wine.
Send it to a dealcoholization facility.
Remove the alcohol.
Add back a little sweetness or grape concentrate. 

Bottle it.

Technically that produces non-alcoholic wine. But taste a few side by side and the same thing keeps happening. The aromas are fine, sometimes surprisingly good. Then you take a sip and the wine falls apart halfway across the palate.

Thin. Bitter. Short.

It reminds me a little of decaffeinated coffee from the 90s. The smell suggested coffee, but the experience was… something else. The issue isn’t aroma. It’s structure.

Alcohol carries weight in wine. It gives texture, density, presence. Remove it and the wine loses the thing that held everything together. You can’t just ignore that.

Rebuilding the Wine

With Missing Thorn, we treat dealcoholization as the midpoint, not the finish line.

Once the alcohol is removed, the wine has to be rebuilt. Carefully. Piece by piece. Mouthfeel, balance, the way the flavors move through the mid-palate, all the things wine drinkers notice subconsciously even if they can’t quite explain them. That’s where most of the effort goes.

It’s funny actually. In traditional winemaking people talk constantly about minimal intervention. In non-alcoholic wine that idea doesn’t make much sense. If you leave the wine alone after alcohol removal, it just sits there kind of… empty. Intervention isn’t the enemy here. Thoughtless intervention is.

A Quick Word on “Natural Flavors”

This topic comes up a lot, usually with raised eyebrows.

The phrase “natural flavors” makes people nervous. I understand why. Food labeling isn’t always transparent, and plenty of products hide behind vague language.

But in this context we’re talking about naturally derived components used very carefully: things like cacao extracts or gum arabic that help restore texture and weight that alcohol once provided.

Without them, the wine doesn’t hold together.

I think the confusion comes from applying traditional wine rules to a product that has already been fundamentally altered. Once alcohol is removed, you’re not dealing with the same system anymore. The wine needs support.

Otherwise it simply doesn’t work.

The Base Wine Still Matters. A Lot.

Even though the wine gets rebuilt later, where it starts still matters.

Some wines just behave better through dealcoholization. Highly tannic wines? Usually a bad idea. Heavy oak tends to get loud in unpleasant ways. Aromatic varieties often hold up better, which surprised me the first time I saw it happen.

Cooler-climate wines can be helpful too. Softer tannins, brighter aromatics, those things survive the process more gracefully.

And there are little technical quirks along the way. Certain compounds that create green or herbal notes sometimes diminish during dealcoholization, which changes how you think about the base wine in the first place.

You learn by tasting. A lot of tasting.

The Trickiest Part: Creating the Feeling of Age

In regular wine, oak aging adds texture and aromatic complexity. Vanilla, toast, spice — those layers build slowly over time. In non-alcoholic wine, oak can be a disaster. It overwhelms the wine almost immediately.

So the question becomes: how do you create the impression of maturity without relying on the same tools? Sometimes that means working with small aromatic elements. A hint of something that reminds your palate of oak aging even though the process itself is different.

It’s a bit like stage design in theater. You don’t build a real city street on stage. You build something that feels convincing when the lights come up.

Wine memory matters here. The palate remembers what complexity feels like.

The Competition Might Not Be Wine

Here’s something people in the wine world don’t always like hearing.

Some of the most interesting non-alcoholic beverages right now aren’t wine at all.

Sparkling teas, for example, are doing fascinating things with texture and tannin. They’re layered, aromatic, surprisingly serious. And they’re not pretending to be wine.

That honesty helps them.

If non-alcoholic wine doesn’t keep improving, people won’t care whether the beverage started as wine or not. They’ll just drink whatever tastes better.

That’s a pretty good motivator.

What We’re Actually Trying to Do

Missing Thorn isn’t trying to perfectly imitate traditional wine. That would be unrealistic.

The goal is simpler and maybe more interesting. We want to create a non-alcoholic wine that still feels thoughtful. Something with texture and complexity. Something that makes sense on a dinner table. Not a substitute. A different expression of wine.

And honestly, that’s what keeps the project interesting for me. Every vintage, every batch, every small adjustment… you learn something new about how wine behaves once alcohol is gone.

Turns out removing one component changes everything. Still figuring it out, actually.