Vin d’Ablution

As you know we do like our wine.

However there is one slight down side to that (other than the hangover if you’ve overindulged…) and that’s that it’s not very diet friendly.

While I was on the internet I happened to stumble across a company selling non-alcoholic wines, beers etc.

There used to be some really good non or low alcoholic beers on the market a few years ago so we thought we’d give the wine a try. If they were ok then we could still enjoy a bottle of wine without the guilt of excess calories or units of alcohol.

We ordered a half dozen selection of reds, whites and a sparkling so we’d get a variety of the different wines.

The first bottle we tried was one of the reds. It wasn’t very nice….

The second bottle we tried was a white. We decided to try this one after we’d had a bottle of real wine so we’d be slightly merry when we drank it and wouldn’t be too bothered how it tasted. To be fair it didn’t taste too bad.

The third bottle we tried was another red, but different from the first one. We again drank this one after a bottle of the real stuff. On it’s own it wasn’t that good so we decided to mix it with some lemonade to make sort of a sangria. It was ok but I couldn’t drink a lot of it.

We tried the fourth bottle, a white Riesling last night. Again it was after a bottle of the real thing. John tasted it first and had a pained look on his face… I didn’t get as fair as tasting it, the smell of enough !!!!! It smelt of wee.

None the non alcoholic wines we tried had the aroma that normally goes with real wine, however none of them was as vile as the Riesling.

The only way I could taste it was by holding my nose. It was pretty much how I imagine urine tastes. It was gross!!!

We still had two bottles left so decided to have a taste testing session in the kitchen last night.

The fifth bottle was another white. Thankfully it didn’t smell or taste of wee but didn’t taste very pleasant. John hit on the idea of trying some juice in them. Of the various varieties of juice we had, none of them made any difference to the horrible taste.

The sixth and final bottle was a fizzy. To be fair it didn’t smell that bad, well not compared to the others…

However the taste was pretty much like the previous ones that evening.

We still had some orange juice out from the previous tasting session so John made a ‘Bucks Fizz’. I’ve never tasted Bucks Fizz (I did have something similar at one of the Hull conferences - it was the one where we had to go to the Town Hall for a reception. The white wine was awful so we mixed it with orange juice) so couldn’t tell what it was meant to taste like. Somehow I think the real McCoy would taste better than what we had.

I guess it won’t come as any surprise that we won’t be buying any more….

Marie