You'll Never Guess That This Bubbly Is Booze-Free ??

The rise of the sober curious movement, which encourages people to consider experiencing life without alcohol, has ~loads~ of people rethinking their drinking habits, whether they're flirting with sobriety for 31 days in the Dry January challenge or giving the bottle the boot completely.

If you love the taste of wine, though, you’re faced with a bit of a dilemma: How can you get that delicious flavor and join the party without boozing it up? Enter non-alcoholic wine. Oh yes, it's a thing.

Alcohol-free wine means you can sip bubbly, cabernet, chardonnay, and more sans booze. They're oh-so clutch when you don’t feel like having another seltzer while everyone else samples the latest French Bordeaux.

In general, non-alcoholic wines are made one of two ways: Vacuum distillation, in which the alcohol is basically burned or boiled off, and reverse osmosis, in which the wine's aroma compounds are filtered out before distillation to make booze-free bevvies, according to Maria C. Hunt, wine journalist, educator, and author of The Bubbly Bar: Champagne and Sparkling Wine Cocktails for Every Occasion.

These alcohol-free chemistry experiments aren't perfect, though. “Alcohol is what carries a lot of the aroma and flavor compounds in the wine,” Hunt says. “When you remove that, you kind of remove the heart of the beverage.”

That said, Hunt says non-alcoholic sparkling wines taste the best. “When you remove the alcohol from sparkling wine, you’re left with acidity, which you already expect,” she explains. “Effervescence helps to put some of that textural character back into the wine.”

Also worth noting: Any wine with 0.5% or less alcohol by volume should be labeled as "non-alcoholic," per the FDA. If you want absolutely zero alcohol in your drink, you’ll need an option labeled "alcohol-free."

If you want to try vino without the booze, the following 10 options are top-rated and expert-approved.