Winebits 807: Alcohol-free wine, Cooper’s Hawk, bad news

This week’s wine news (a day early because of the July 4 holiday): The challenge of alcohol-free wine, plus Cooper’s Hawk is thriving even if wine isn’t

• It’s not easy: Chilean mega-producer Concha y Toro, which has worked extensively with alcohol-free wine, has not seen much success. “I’m not seeing or tasting any wine that is enjoyable with zero alcohol. The jump between 12 or 14 percent abv to zero is too much,” the company’s technical director and winemaker Marcelo Papa told the JustDrinks trade magazine. This is a common problem with no- and low-alcohol wine; take the booze out, and the wine loses much of its flavor. It’s significant that a producer as big as Concha y Toro is having problems, and especially given what various studies suggest zero-booze wine is the next big thing. If a Big Wine company can’t make a quality product, what does that say about the product’s long-term feasibility?

• Continued success: Cooper’s Hawk, the winery/restaurant, is a bright spot in both the wine and restaurant landscapes, reports Nation’s Restaurant News. Its sales jumped almost 30 percent over the last year, putting it the top 100 of all restaurant chains for sales. In addition, its estimated sales per unit were up almost 14 percent,  and only The Cheesecake Factory and Ocean Prime have higher average unit volumes. The reason for its success? Its customers have fun: “The chain’s model is unique in that it’s both an upscale restaurant and a wine club with some 600,000 members, up by about 20 percent over the past couple of years. … The chain is also a beneficiary of increasing demand for experiential restaurants and, with its wine club, feeling part of a greater community, all stemming in part from the pandemic-related lockdown.”

• More bad news: Shanken News Daily, part of the Wine Spectator empire, is such a cheerleader for the wine business that it could find a way to put a positive spin on the return of Prohibition. But even it admits the slump in wine sales isn’t good: “After 27 consecutive annual gains, wine industry volumes fell for the second year in a row in 2022, according to the 2023 edition of The U.S. Wine Market.” And it expects another decline this year. The numbers in this report are consistent with all of the rest, some of which I have noted here (and many of which I haven’t, since all the bad news even gets to me). The point of mentioning the Shanken report? That if it says things are bad, they must really be bad. $10 wine, anyone?