Zero Alcohol - Zero Enjoyment

Right, quick reminder: I’ve tightened up my drinking after piling on the pork. Wine is now two nights a week, not five. Which is how I ended up in a dangerously optimistic mood and decided to try a zero alcohol Malbec…

It was vile.

Not “interesting”. Not “a bit different”. Not “surprisingly good once you get used to it”. Just grape juice. Purple, sugary, innocent grape juice. The sort of thing you’d pour at a children’s party, then spend the next hour wondering why the lounge has become a trampoline.

And it wasn’t even subtle about it. One sip and I knew exactly what I was dealing with. I didn’t drink the rest. I put it in the fridge, next to the apple juice. Where it belongs. If anyone asks, I’ll say it’s a new varietal: Malbec de Breakfast.

Now, I did a bit of reading, because I’m not entirely unhinged. And it turns out most of these “zero” wines are not simply unfermented grape juice dressed up for a night out. They usually make real wine first, ferment it properly, then remove the alcohol afterwards.

Which sounds clever. Very modern. Very “we’ve got this now”.

But alcohol in wine is not just the naughty bit. It’s the scaffolding. It carries flavour. It gives body. It rounds off tannins. It’s the thing that stops wine tasting like cordial with aspirations.

Take the alcohol out and you don’t just remove the alcohol. You remove the warmth, the depth, the balance, the backbone. You end up with something that has the colour of wine, the packaging of wine, the price of wine, and the taste of a fruit shoot that’s trying to pass itself off as an adult.

Malbec is a particularly cruel choice for this experiment because Malbec leans on richness. It’s meant to be velvety and dark and slightly brooding, like a French detective with unresolved issues. Strip out the alcohol and it collapses into a thin purple puddle that tastes like it’s trying to apologise.

And then there’s the label. It actually says, in all seriousness: “Serve cold.”

Serve cold.

That’s not a serving suggestion, that’s damage limitation.

Now, before the wine purists start sharpening their corkscrews, yes - there are perfectly respectable reds you can chill. The light, fruity Italian ones with a little fizz, the sort of thing you drink at lunch in the sun while pretending you don’t have responsibilities. Chill those and they get better. They’re made for it. They’re cheerful. They know what they are.

This stuff isn’t.

A red wine that has to be chilled just to be tolerable is not a red wine. It’s a soft drink in a suit, and the suit doesn’t fit. Cold is what you do to things that are too sweet, too thin, and slightly embarrassing. It’s why we chill lager, white wine, and regret.

And look, I’m not against zero alcohol drinks. Some of them are genuinely decent now. Alcohol free beer has improved enormously. Alcohol free sparkling can be perfectly enjoyable because bubbles do half the job and everyone’s expectations are already set to “festive and fizzy”. Even a good tonic with lime feels grown up because it doesn’t taste like it was designed to be served with a bendy straw.

But zero alcohol red wine is still, in most cases, an elaborate way of paying wine prices for posh juice.

If you want to stop drinking, fair enough. If you’re driving, on medication, or you’ve decided you’d rather wake up without your brain feeling like it’s been sandblasted, I’m with you.

Just don’t let anyone tell you a zero alcohol Malbec is wine.

It’s not wine. It’s grape juice that’s been through an expensive process to remove the only thing holding it together.

It’s the moral equivalent of buying a sports car, removing the engine, and then calling it a “performance lifestyle solution”.

So yes, it’s in the fridge now, next to the apple juice. Where it can live out its days in the correct category, and stop pretending it belongs on the table with grown ups.

A Public Service Announcement: Warning - dramatically reducing your alcohol intake gives you constipation while your body adjusts.