Alcohol-free wines

not

produced by

"extract the

decent

wines

used?

It's not an answer to your question, but bear in mind that so-called "alcohol-free" wines actually have around half of a percent alcohol in them. That may be OK with your friends or it may not, especially if they abstain because they have alcohol sensitivities.

"James Silverton"

If you're drinking alcohol-free beverages for driving license based issues, keep an eye open: all of the alcohol-free beers I have seen had an alcohol percentage around 0.2%, some get to 0.3 and some stay around 0.1. Sure that's not much, but if someone drinks a pair before an alcohol-in-blood test (alcolemia, in italian and maybe international medic slang), he could get busted if the allowed alcochol-in- blood limit is particularly low. It happened to a friend in my town, he had to undergo 6 alcoholemic blood tests after having had his driving license seized for driving drunk, and he got busted in one test thanks to 2 tourtel (non capitalization intentional) beers. Tourtel scores 0.3% alcohol, here in Italy. Is it the same all around?

Vilco

A better process than vacuum distillation is crossflow filtration, using a semipermeable membrane. It's similar to reverse osmosis, except the main product (de-alcoholized wine) is on the pressure side of the membrane. The alcohol comes out the low pressure side. This process does a better job of retaining desirable volatiles in the wine.

Tom S

"Vilco"in news:NRWLc.32882$ snipped-for-privacy@news3.tin.it...

It's been some years since I saw the formal numbers but I recall that juice of ripe fruit could naturally have as much as 0.5% alcohol, from natural fermentation or whatever, and this was acknowledged in US food purity regulations. Other ferment products such as bread contain some and not all of it is lost in baking. I also recall from the summary in Goodman and Gilman that you need an intake rate above some 10ml per hour before alcohol shows up in your blood, but an expert could comment better, and also, people do take beer in quantities larger than they do fruit juice or bread.

Any fruit juice - just like alcohol-free wine - may have a maximum of 0.5 per cent alcohol (at least in Europe, but I don't think it's that much different anywhere else).

M.

In the end, it doesn't matter much how the alcohol is removed as wine without alcohol is not wine and doesn't taste like it. I didn't realize just how important it alochohol is until I had the opportunity to taste the same wine with and without. Still, if your friends like the stuff, there's nothing wrong with exploring which alcohol removal methods give the best result. But keep in mind the "best result" will still never be wine, let alone good wine!

- Mark W.

opportunity

removal

Oh, I fully agree as I hope I had indicated. Even alcohol-free beer is pretty dire! It is interesting however how well brands of wine like Ariel (spelling?) seem to sell.

And remember that your blood may have something like 0.2 per cent arising from natural processes in your body... Anders