The interest in lowering the ethanol content of wines is not
new. Indeed several companies worldwide have launched
so called “zero alcohol wines” during the last four or five
years. However, the true interest of the wine industry
from warm climate wine producing regions is related to
global climate change, and its effects on grape ripening.
The problem is especially striking for red wines, and is
also associated to the trend in consumer preferences towards well structured and full body wines. Oenologists
are increasingly faced with the dilemma of appropriate
time of harvest, giving preference to either optimal technological maturity, with the risk of suboptimal polyphenolic
maturity; or to polyphenolic maturity, giving rise to musts
with excess sugar content (Mira de Ordu~na, 2010). These
wines easily go beyond 15% alcohol by volume (ABV) resulting in a number of marketing issues, including rejection
by health conscious consumers, civil restrictions, concerns
on road safety, or trade barriers. In the case of quality wines
solutions to these issues will not come from “zero alcohol
wine” technologies, which address a different market and
require aggressive approaches, but rather from approaches
that would be respectful to the quality of the product and
would aim to a realistic control of the alcohol content of
wines.