Deliciousness and craftmanship are guiding principles for winery Benjamin Bridge’s product range, whether they contain alcohol or not, according to its head winemaker Jean-Benoit Deslauriers.
“We’ve become a unique, sum-of-all-parts cellar that’s moving forward with a traditional approach to make products that suit different sensitivities,” says Deslauriers, who oversees a growing portfolio of sparkling, low- and no-alcohol products made in Nova Scotia’s Gaspereau Valley.
Launched in Wolfville in 1999, Benjamin Bridge’s original mission was to harness the potential of cool climate vineyards moderated by the Bay of Fundy to craft traditional-method sparkling wines to rival the best of Champagne. That instinct continues to pay off, as collectors and bubbleheads snap up its brut and rosé releases.
Other Benjamin Bridge innovations have also turned heads in unexpected ways. The 2007 launch of a fizzy, fruity and low-alcohol (6.5 per cent ABV) white blend called Nova 7 quickly became one of the country’s bestselling domestic wines.
Piquette Zero, introduced in 2021, pointed the winery’s interests toward alcohol-free wine alternatives, created by using flavours extracted from grape skins and other ingredients such as organic Citra hops and hand-harvested sea salt.
The enjoyable zero-alcohol sugar-free wine spritzer was launched in 250 millilitre cans in Sobeys and Safeway grocery stores and other retail shops from coast to coast last year.
Building on that success, last summer’s release of a non-alcoholic version of the crowd-pleasing Nova 7 wine was met by an equally enthusiastic consumer response.
Less than one year later, Nova Zero continues to increase its distribution, including Costco warehouse stores in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Ontario and Sobeys locations in Atlantic provinces. (A current list of retailers is listed on the winery’s website, benjaminbridge.com.)
“We never thought we would be looking at such a tremendous reception right out of the box,” says Deslauriers. “There are a surprising number of people who have told us that they prefer Nova Zero to the original.” (Deslauriers adds there are tastings at the winery where employees have mixed up the original and non-alcoholic expression.)
These booze-free drinks offer complex and sophisticated flavours
I’m in my zero-proof summer era and I have zero shame about it
The push to create stylish non-alcoholic offerings that don’t compromise on taste was motivated by the opening of the winery’s tasting room in 2018. The business was entertaining wine enthusiasts as well as guests abstaining from alcohol for health or cultural regions. “We had a desire to create a non-alcoholic experience for them that was both unmatched and previously unavailable,” says Deslauriers.
The success of the category continues to motivate experimentation, while research and development also continues to influence the conventional wine side of the business.
“We are a big team and like to have a few innovations each year,” he explains.
Recent research from IWSR Drinks Market Analysis shows that 50 per cent of wine drinkers are cutting back on their alcohol use, but taste is the largest deterrent to selecting lower-alcohol wine.
Deslauriers, who has been with Benjamin Bridge since 2008, has adopted a minimal-intervention winemaking style. Work on the property seeks to reduce or eliminate human-made or artificial inputs or enhancements in both the farming and the winemaking process. “Our skill set can be described as kind of scaling up of artisan processes,” he says.
Fermentations for the base wines for sparkling or still wines used to create Nova 7, Tidal Bay or Wild Rock are done with naturally occurring yeast as opposed to bringingin more predictable yeast strains developed to reduce the risk of undesirable flavours and maintain consistency.
Non-alcohol products at Benjamin Bridge aren’t made from de-alcoholized wine, which would risk stripping flavours and texture. There is also a compounded expense that comes from making wine and then having to use vacuum distillation, reverse osmosis or spinning-cone technology to eliminate or significantly reduce its alcohol content.
Meanwhile, the team continues to work toward its long-term goal of producing a non-alcoholic wine that delivers the exceptional character and emotional impact of a great bottle of wine.
Why is it so hard to make low or no- alcohol wine taste good?
“We’re taking part in the planetary race to create a non-alcoholic wine that closes the gap with the alcoholic reference point,” he says.
The hope is making a zero-alcohol wine with complexity, intensity and balance while offering the distinctive taste of the Gaspereau Valley. It needs to contain multitudes, or what Deslauriers calls “that je ne sais quoi of an outstanding wine.”
Despite increasing consumer demand, wineries around the world continue to struggle to convey the essence of compelling full-strength wine in a reduced- or zero-alcohol capacity. As Wes Pearson, a senior research scientist for the Australian Wine Research Institute, told The Globe last year, reducing the amount of alcohol results in a significant reduction of “wine-likeness” in most non-alcoholic products.
But investigation and research continue as invested producers around the world seek to crack the code. Last week, Australia’s Treasury Wine Estates celebrated the opening of a new $13-million facility in the Barossa Valley dedicated to producing low- and no-alcohol wine.
The company’s press release says the facility is outfitted with equipment that removes alcohol from wine while preserving the components responsible for a wine’s flavour and fragrance. Treasury Wine Estates is not promising to release Penfolds Grange Zero at this point. But the site will produce new products for established Treasury brands, such as Squealing Pig and Pepperjack, and it will introduce a new label, Sorbet, which features a sparkling, rosé, sauvignon blanc and shiraz accented with fruit and berry flavours at a lower ABV of 8 per cent.
Benjamin Bridge’s intrepid team, meanwhile, will keep pursuing its quest to be the first to make a transcendent wine-like beverage that’s as fresh, vibrant and haunting as its alcoholic counterpart.
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