ALCOHOL VS NO ALCOHOL IN WINE - What are the taste and aroma differences.

Hello, welcome back to the Grape Explorer. Hope you're all keeping well. Today I'm gonna be doing a bit of an aroma and taste comparison between a non-alcohol and an alcohol wine. If you're new to this channel, welcome, I'm the Grape Explorer. I do wine education, product reviews, and lots of wine tastings. So let's get into this one, and if you're interested in wine, consider subscribing. Now I've done plenty of non-alcohol related videos on this channel in the past. They've always proved popular with people who were looking for something perhaps a little bit different. But I've never actually done a side-by-side comparison to understand, well, what are the aroma differences and what are the taste differences when you strip the alcohol away from a bottle of wine? So I've gone out today and I've gone and bought two Cabernet Sauvignons. This is the non-alcohol version. This is the alcohol version. This is from Iceberg. I've featured some of their other wines previously. I noticed they've gone through something of a marketing change since I last did this. They now say they are supporting the designated driver, clearly aimed at promoting healthy and safe activity. And the other thing that the non-alcohol versions of wine always do is they like to publish some of the nutritional benefits on the back. So 100 milliliter glass is just gonna be 22 calories. Very low indeed. You're probably gonna get at least double that when it comes to the alcohol version. The alcohol version I've gone for is a Cabernet Sauvignon from Gallo Family Wineries. The reason I chose Gallo is I was trying to get something of a price comparison to this one. I think this was about 3.75, very cheap. I paid five pounds for this particular bottle. So again, I'm trying to get something at the lower end of the market. You don't really get any high-class non-alcohol wines. No disrespect. But really, they are cheaper wines, of course. You know, it always makes me laugh when I do a video on non-alcohol wine. Some smart-ass in the comments always writes, well, isn't it just grape juice? And I always just write back, all wine is grape juice. So yeah, I get what they're saying. They're saying you could just go and buy like a carton of grape juice. Might be a little bit cheaper. So let's get our wine into the glass. So this is our Iceberg. Now I'm just gonna pour a little bit of Gallo. Some differences coming up straight away. Our color, really. You know, I can notice some color differences immediately. I'm not sure how well you're gonna notice the difference on those two. The Iceberg is ever so slightly lighter. We're not here today to look at the color. We're very much focused on the aroma and the taste of both of these wines. Let's start off by giving this one a bit of a swirl and going through some of the aroma characteristics of the Gallo. Very light and fruity. You get a little bit of a sense of alcohol on this particular one, just through the aroma on the nose. It's quite lifted into the nostrils. Things coming through are some darker fruits. Things like cherry, a little bit of plum, a little bit of blackberry perhaps. But actually, you know, for five pound, the aroma on this one is pretty decent, no complaints. So let's take a look at the Cabernet Sauvignon with the alcohol taken away, what are gonna be some of the key differences. Whoa, the thing that strikes me the most about this is it has a much more confected, candied type aroma. The thing that actually came through is its strawberry laces, or something you might find in a packet of Haribo. It's a lot more confected. You know, it just has that sweeter feel about it. Now it is a dry wine, but it just has that sweeter feel about it. Yeah, the more I smell it, the more I feel like I'm in a bit of a sweet shop, like a candy store somewhere. So yeah, real differences there. Let me just go back to this one. Yeah, it's the alcohol that hits you the moment you go back to this one. That sense in the nostrils of something alcoholic in the wine is what goes back. So immediate differences on the aroma between these two. But neither are unpleasant. If you like your bags of sweets like I do, you're gonna enjoy this one. But the aromas in this one are more intense. There's more intensity about these ones. Again, possibly because of the alcohol involvement in this, it's making my nostrils feel that little bit more lifted. This one is a little bit flatter, but it does smell sweeter. And that's one of the key differences that I'm getting here from the aroma. So let's go into the taste. I'm gonna taste the alcohol version first. Quite tannic, some acidity. I can feel the alcohol at the back of the throat. It tastes like a slightly cheaper wine, I have to say. I get that it's made in a completely bulk style, which of course this one will be as well. Hasn't really got a lot of length. So it had some acidity, perhaps medium. It had medium tannins. It had a short finish. And for me, it had medium alcohol. So let's move on to the no alcohol version of Cabernet Sauvignon. Couldn't be more different. So couldn't be more different. You know, when people make those comments around, isn't it just grape juice? I do understand where they're coming from because this one hasn't really got acidity. It's got no grip at all. It's got very little in the way of length. It doesn't taste sweet, although the aromas were sweet. It is the dry wine, but it tastes like a watered down version of the alcohol wine. If I go back to this one now and have a drink, all of a sudden, this one doesn't taste as good. It tastes a lot more bitter, a lot more acidic. And that's potentially because this one is closer to the grape juice. It's closer to something that would have additional sugars within it. Now, interestingly, because they do go into the nutritional information, on the non-alcohol versions, I can see that 100 milliliters contains five grams of sugar. So I can already tell that where all of the yeasts have converted the sugars in this one to alcohol, there's clearly a lot of residual sugar left in this one, which is why this one tastes so bitter when I go back to it. That sweetness is making this one taste more bitter, more acidic. So the advice is, by all means, just don't do these as a side-by-side comparison. This one on its own, I think, has really nice aromas. Those sweet aromas are really enjoyable. But when it comes to the flavor, it's really lacking any sort of intensity of flavors. And that's possibly because I've been having the alcohol version alongside it. But I have to say, by doing a comparison to two, I am a little bit disappointed with this one. It is £3.75. I get it, it's a cheaper wine. But I probably am a little bit disappointed because it just doesn't have some of the qualities that you would expect, even from a cheap five-pound wine. I would probably expect a little bit more. And I think that comes down to where the alcohol has been taken away. It loses something in the mouthfeel. It loses something in the body. But of course, non-alcohol wines are something that are on the increase. There should be better and better versions of these coming out over the next few years as people understand how to create better versions of them. But it's been fascinating to take a look against both of them just to see what are some of those differences. The other thing I'm really noticing is this one's really bubbly, as you can probably see. There's no bubbles left in this one. It's just very bubbly sort of wine. I don't know why. But interesting, I think, as a comparison. But by all means, if you can have a glass of non-alcohol wine, have it after you've had a glass of alcohol wine because going back to that one after this one was pretty awful and it made both of them seem pretty dreadful, which I don't think is fair on either of them. I hope you've enjoyed this brief comparison of non-alcohol versus alcohol in terms of taste and aroma perspective. Let me know your thoughts on non-alcohol wine in the comment section below. Please don't anyone write, isn't it only grape juice? I already knew that before I started this video. But for now, I'm gonna drink this one. I'm gonna say cheers. I'm the Grape Explorer. Look forward to seeing you again soon. Cheers.