The global non-alcoholic drinks market is anticipated to grow tenfold by 2025 as sales continue to boom. With big drinkers turning away the rosé this summer, alcohol-free alternatives that do not compromise on style are in high demand.
Leading the global shift to alcohol-free drinking is Amanda Thomson, CEO of Thomson & Scott. Thomson, praised in 2019 as one of Business Insider’s Coolest People in Food & Drink, is a former BBC arts broadcaster with a diploma in wine from Le Cordon Bleu School. Thomson & Scott’s new vegan and organic alcohol-free range, ‘Noughty’, is now redefining healthy drinking.
“I built a relationship with champagne in the art space, but I started to be struck by how much sugar and chemicals were added to wine,” says Thomson. As a woman brought up with an emphasis on a healthy diet, she sounds disappointed. “I looked at alcohol as a concept and, whichever way I cut it, it wasn’t healthy. No matter how much I enjoyed it.”
Yet, the prospect of alcohol-free wine alternatives seemed bleak. From a taste perspective, most were considered by Thomson to be “pretty unpalatable” and “not even faintly delicious.” So, in 2019, she decided to create her own in the hope of recreating the ritual of drinking with the same luxury feeling as champagne, but both alcohol-free and delicious.
“If you’re not obsessed with taste, then you shouldn’t be in the drink’s world,” Thomson says. She admits her wine-making process is comparable to that of her personal style: “I’ve always approached my liquid like the fashion world, in a diffusion. I create the recipe, then work with a top winemaker on the liquid.”
In self-described “wine geek speak”, this means perfecting a Noughty bottle’s “mouthfeel”. Mouthfeel is the sensation of wine in the mouth and on the mid-palate of your taste. The bubbles in both the sparkling chardonnay and rosé help to create this distinct taste in their alcohol-free bottles.
“The perfect tasting pair is whatever you like to drink it with. That’s how our wine should be enjoyed.” For Thomson, a glass of Noughty sparkling pairs perfectly with a truffle risotto at dinner, if she’s not enjoying a glass of her – holy grail – dealcoholized rouge in the sun.
Adding chemicals and sugar to wine significantly drives down the price by masking any imperfections in the purity of the liquid. “The more delicious the liquid, the less it needs to mask anything wrong with it,” Thomson explains.
Currently, UK regulations do not require wine producers to include ingredients such as sugar and pesticides on their labels. This makes bottled alcohol the only legal consumable where you do not fully know what is in your drink.
“Purity is a driver for me, both from a sustainability perspective and when it comes to being organic. It was just about creating something as pure as I could,” she says.
Amused by the oxymoron of our analytical approach to a healthy diet and consumption of liquid sugar, Thomson feels the drinks industry needs to take responsibility. “Such a big part of bad drinking nutrition is that the drinks industry has not told you what is in your drink,” she says.
Thomson, one of several new female founders in the alcohol-free space, is now a driving force in the debate for greater transparency in UK wine labelling, with the strong belief that current descriptors of wine content are “archaic and confusing to the consumer.”
The pandemic brought increased demand for the product, at only six months into trading. “As a brand, we found a huge amount of people were wanting wellness as they recognised that their alcohol habits were often problematic,” Thomson says.
Noughty is now experiencing international success. Their sparkling bottles are currently an alcohol-free welcome drink on Virgin Atlantic flights, while 46 countries stock Noughty bottles worldwide.
Noughty’s target audience is “anyone who enjoys fine wine but is interested in a more balanced lifestyle” and they recently experienced a surge in demand from young, fitness-focused men who are conscious of drinking less.
With a Noughty still white and rosé coming soon, Thomson plans to build the brand’s portfolio to include a delicious alcohol-free bottle for every occasion where you would normally enjoy the ritual of drinking a glass of fine wine. “I think the legacy that older people have created for the young is alcohol misuse,” says Thomson. “We owe it to the next generation to make sure there are quality drinks on offer to restore the balance.”
Featured picture: Noughty, Picture editor: Charlotte Doyle