Is 0.5% really alcohol-free? What the number actually means

It's the first thing people ask, and it deserves a straight answer. Most premium dealcoholised wines — including every wine in our cellar — sit at less than 0.5% alcohol by volume. That is not a marketing rounding trick; it's a deliberate winemaking choice.

Here's the part that surprises people: trace alcohol occurs naturally in things you eat without a second thought. A ripe banana, a bread roll, a glass of kombucha or a bottle of orange juice can all carry comparable or higher trace levels through natural fermentation. At under 0.5%, a dealcoholised wine sits in that same everyday company.

So why not always zero? Because the last fraction of a percent is where the wine lives. Alcohol carries aroma and texture; strip it away too aggressively and you strip the wine with it. The best producers remove the alcohol gently — under vacuum, at low temperature — and stop at the point where the wine still smells and feels like wine. That's why a <0.5% bottle from a great house tastes complete, while a clumsy 0.0% can taste hollow.

And because the wine keeps its structure, it belongs on the table for any occasion — not as a substitute, but as the bottle you'd have poured anyway.

The takeaway: don't shop the percentage, shop the producer. The number tells you it's safe for any occasion; the maker tells you whether it's worth opening.

Begin with the Discovery Flight — six bottles, two houses, one easy way in.