Alcohol-free or dealcoholised spritz: what's the difference?

On the alcohol-free shelf, two families sit side by side. They often carry the same words on the label, but they are not made the same way, and you can taste it in the glass.

A dealcoholised drink: the alcohol is removed

A dealcoholised wine, beer or spirit is first produced the classic way, with fermentation and alcohol. The alcohol is then removed, most often by vacuum distillation or filtration. The result keeps part of the original drink's character, but the process also strips away aromas and body, which sometimes have to be made up for with sugar or added flavourings.

A drink crafted alcohol-free: there never was any

A drink designed alcohol-free from the start never goes through fermentation. Its flavours come straight from the ingredients: botanicals, peels, fruits and spices, macerated and then blended. The craft is to build complexity with plants, rather than take it away with the alcohol.

What it changes in the glass

• Taste: a drink crafted alcohol-free doesn't try to imitate a wine or an alcoholic spritz "minus something". It has its own profile.
• Transparency: no industrial dealcoholisation process, and an ingredient list you can understand.
• Freedom: you can create pairings that would be impossible with an alcoholic base, like the mandarin, basil and Camargue salt of our N°3.

And FINOTE?

All FINOTE apéritifs and spritz are crafted alcohol-free from the start. We begin with a family recipe born in 1871 in Argelès-sur-Mer and build it by macerating and blending botanicals, before carbonating our spritz with fine bubbles. No fermentation, no dealcoholisation: just the complexity of botanicals.

Taste for yourself: our alcohol-free spritz and apéritif.