Whisper it – alcohol-free wine has arrived in France

“My family wouldn’t talk to me for a year, such was my ‘treason’. And even today I get hate mail from wine-growers saying I am ruining the market,” she says.

“But now my father congratulates me and says I am the locomotive in the wine train. And if we are surviving today in these difficult times, it is because we have shifted towards the no-alcohol market.”

“For the purists it’s been very difficult to accept,” says Bernard Rabouy, a wine-grower for the Bordeaux Families cooperative.

“But we have to evolve. The fact is that the customers aren’t where they used to be. So we have to go and get them or they will go somewhere else.”

Promoters of alcohol-free wine make much of the notion that it allows non-drinkers – who used to feel excluded – to join in the wine-banter. And it is true that the rituals of opening, sniffing, describing and comparing are now open to all.

“What we want to do is try to bring back the France of our youth – when everyone sat around the dinner table and drank wine, and it was a real moment of sharing,” says Anne Kattaneh.

“And these days the only way we are going to be able to do that is if non-alcoholic wines are part of the culture.”

“The idea that the wine world was always as it is now, is rubbish,” says oenologist Brochet.

“Things evolve. Once upon a time the barrel was an innovation. The cork was an innovation; grape varietals were an innovation. And now this is a new one – which could help save the industry and the wonderful landscape and culture that goes with it.

“As [poet] Paul Valery said – what is tradition, but an innovation that succeeded?”