The region’s dominance as a source for dealcoholized wines comes down to climate, technology, and a population willing to drink NA.

With a thousand-bottle list featuring pages upon pages of Champagne and hidden gems from small producers in Jura, it’s no secret that New York City’s influential wine bar Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels leans hard on the French hits. Yet there’s one section where France takes an unmistakable back seat to Germany and Austria: nonalcoholic wine.

The region’s dominance on Compagnie’s list ties back to early 20th-century records from the small town of Rüdesheim am Rhein in Germany’s Rhine Valley region. At the time, a wine merchant named Carl Jung (of no relation to the famed Swiss psychotherapist) realized that more of his customers were choosing not to consume alcohol for health reasons like high blood pressure and heart complications. This shift in demand drove him to develop and, in 1907, secure a patent for an extraction process that would lower the boiling point of wine to remove the alcohol present while preserving the vintage’s bouquet, body, and taste. That pioneering extraction process evolved into vacuum distillation, a process used by most dealcoholized wine producers around the world today.

Aside from being the birthplace of a key piece of technology, Germany also has the right climatic and geographic conditions for making stellar nonalcoholic wines. “Regions like the Mosel, Rheingau, Pfalz, and Rheinhessen are well suited for producing nonalcoholic wines because of their cooler climates and topography, allowing the grapes to ripen slowly, which retains acidity and builds the aromatic and flavor complexity that is crucial for high-quality nonalcoholic wines,” says Steffen Schindler, director of marketing at the German Wine Institute.

The region’s dominance as a source for dealcoholized wines is also evident in the portfolios of winemakers based in other countries. San Francisco–based Studio Null sources the base for its Grüner Weiss from Austria, while ISH, a nonalcoholic wine brand founded in Copenhagen, uses a blend of Pinot Blanc and Sylvaner from the Rheingau region in its sparkling white wine. The results are stunning—crisp, with bright minerality and notes of lemon and lime.

Today, most restaurants and bars in large cities like Berlin and Munich offer at least one nonalcoholic wine. Throughout Germany, though, there are expansive lists available, like at Berlin’s Michelin-starred Tulus Lotrek and Das Rutz, both of which offer a nonalcoholic wine pairing to accompany their tasting menus. While producers are quick to credit the country’s favorable climate and technological leadership with its deep level of market penetration, most acknowledge there’s another, less obvious player to thank.

“Nonalcoholic beer is consumed by nearly half of Germans today, and production of this style has increased by almost 75% from 2011 through 2021,” notes Cassidy Havens, managing director of Wines of Germany USA. “With nonalcoholic wine being a rapidly growing category, Germany’s strong reputation for its nonalcoholic beer gives excellent credibility for its nonalcoholic wines.”

Joseph Leitz, a third-generation winemaker whose family estate Weingut Josef Leitz has been producing wines in the Rheingau region of Germany since 1744, calls the 1980s a “turning point” for Germany’s relationship with alcohol, in large part due to nonalcoholic beer.

Today, most restaurants and bars in large cities like Berlin and Munich offer at least one nonalcoholic wine.

“That’s when people started to look for better food in the supermarket, because they were looking to live more healthy. They wanted more natural oils, reduced animal fat, and, of course, lower alcohol levels.” He notes that while the early versions of nonalcoholic German beer were “virtually undrinkable”—a product that more closely resembled fancy grape juice than a crisp Chablis—the demand in the market pushed producers to innovate and make better alternatives, just as it had motivated Jung to develop his vacuum distillation method in the early 20th century.

“Many nonalcoholic producers went to a distillation place and said, ‘Oh, give me some of your product for me to put my label on,’” says Leitz. His eponymous NA wine label uses his family’s wine to create dealcoholized still and sparkling Riesling, Chardonnay, rosé, Pinot Noir, and a Blanc de Blancs. “We didn’t reinvent the wheel, but we were the first producers with three to four hundred years of winemaking history who used their own premium wines to make dealcoholized products,” he says.

“We tasted lots of nonalcoholic red wines, and they just weren’t touching our wine hearts.”

And the results are delightful—Leitz’s dealcoholized Chardonnay is packed with notes of lemon zest and apple, but it still has that oaky, vanilla finish you’d expect; the Blanc de Blancs is bright and minty, with a hint of pineapple.

The itch to make better dealcoholized wines also motivated Patrick Bayer and Katja Bernegger, second-generation winemakers behind the Austrian winery Heribert Bayer. The couple launched Zeronimo Wine in the summer of 2023 by using Leonis, a 98-point red blend of Blaufränkisch, Zweigelt, and Cabernet Sauvignon produced in Burgenland, as a base.

“We tasted lots of nonalcoholic red wines, and they just weren’t touching our wine hearts. They were missing the structure, depth, and complexity,” explains Bernegger. “Most [nonalcoholic] wines are still produced for the masses, and I wanted to produce nonalcoholic wines that felt like the taste of a classic wine.”

The duo bet that as the market grew and consumers in German-speaking countries began to internalize and accept the quality-to-price correlation in the category, they would be willing to pay more for a better-made nonalcoholic offering. Their Century and Leonis blends retail for 49 and 36 euros respectively, more than double the average price of domestically produced nonalcoholic wine in grocery stores across Germany and Austria. Bernegger and Bayer are also continuing to innovate; they created a patented aroma recovery method, which helps protect their vacuum-distilled wines from what they describe as the “wet paper towel or straw” nose that many alcohol-free red wines suffer from.

Even still, Bayer estimates that the German nonalcoholic wine market is roughly two years ahead of Austria. He says that ski resorts in the western part of the country, which are frequented by German tourists, are hotbeds of change for the category.

“They go to these resorts and expect to find nonalcoholic offerings. The Germans are very direct, and they ask why there are fewer options here,” he says, laughing.