As a French teetotaler, Justine Bobin knows how challenging it can be to not drink in a country where wine, beer and other boozy beverages still lubricate many social interactions, even if France is less hooked on alcohol than it used to be.
“People are convinced that you can’t have fun if you don’t drink alcohol in France,” she says.
Which is one of the reasons that Bobin trekked up to Paris this week, to check out the growing array of zero- and low-alcohol drinks — predominantly red, white, rosé and sparkling wines from around Europe, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Those products rubbed shoulders with established producers and distillers of all things alcoholic at a major international trade show for the wine and spirits industries.
With slogans championing “no alcohol, no regrets, no consequences” and encouraging consumers to “drink different,” producers of so-called no/low beverages are aiming to profit from changing tastes and habits, in particular those of young adults more mindful of alcohol’s harms.
In the United States, fewer Americans are reporting that they drink alcohol. In other major international markets, a growing no/low industry is chipping away at booze’s hegemony.
