New Zealand: Alcohol companies investing heavily in low or no-alcohol beverages

Alcohol companies are heavily investing in low or no-alcohol beverages amid soaring demand, reflecting a Kiwi drinking culture shift that's been gaining momentum over the past 15 years, Newshub reported on July 1.

It looks like wine, tastes like wine, and is made with grapes (like wine), but it doesn't come with the effects too much wine can have.

"It's all about finding a process that starts with a good regular wine and removing the alcohol as delicately as you can - wine is quite fragile," Duncan Shouler, Giesen Group's director of winemaking, told Newshub.

Giesen has upgraded to a bigger and better spinning cone to achieve this.

"It removes the aroma from the wine, so we capture the aroma and we put it to one side and then we put the wine back through the machine again and it removes all the alcohol... then we take the aroma and put it back into the wine."

The spinning cone operates 24/7 to keep up with increasing demand for alcohol-free beverages.

"We've grown from producing none four-and-a-half years ago, to producing just under two million litres per year," Shouler said.

That's 15 percent of total production.

Globally, low and no-alcohol beer and wine are now a booming billion-dollar industry.

New Zealand Alcohol Beverages Council executive director Virginia Nicholls said more than 55 percent of people have consumed low or no-alcohol beverages in the past year.

"That's up about 6 percent on the year before, so it's increasing all the time," she said.

Recent data revealed the total volume of alcoholic beverages available for consumption was down 4.3 percent, or 477 million litres.

The volume of beer fell 4.4 percent to 281 million litres, wine fell 2.4 percent to 99 million litres and spirits fell the furthest, down 5.7 percent to 97 million litres.

"More than 25 percent of us are consuming less than the late 1970s, but what's even more important than that, the Health NZ data shows 84 percent of us are drinking in a responsible way," Nicholls said.

Equally, 16 percent are still drinking in a hazardous way, but the trend is overall leaning towards 'sip and savour' behaviour.

Shouler said Giesen still makes more regular wine than its alcohol-free counterpart, and that's "really important to us".

"But this zero-alcohol movement is also really important and it's where we see some really great growth," he added.

Excise tax isn't paid for alcohol-free wine - it's classified as a fruit juice. But it's an adult drink, created through a complex process, which is reflected in consumer pricing - and breathing new meaning into wine o'clock.

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