With the increasing popularity of non-alcoholic drinks, more and more international competitions for wine, beer and spirits are looking at non-alcoholic products.
Not surprisingly, alcohol-free products are making their way into supermarket shelves. In the face of all these new references, consumers can sometimes get lost. It is therefore with the aim of guiding these buyers of alcohol-free products that international competitions have widened the categories allowing the best no-low alternatives on the market to be rewarded with medals.
Numerous competitions reward the best 0° beers. The best known of these is the World Beer Award, which has been awarded and promoted every year since 2007 for the best beers in all categories (including the non-alcoholic category) on an international level. In Belgium, the 2020 edition of the Brussels Beer Challenge saw more than 50 samples of alcohol-free beers compete. These competitions allow the winners to significantly increase their visibility on the market.
On the spirits side, the most prestigious international competitions also create "no-low" categories. This is the case, for example, of the London Spirit Awards or the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, one of the most influential spirits competitions in the world. At the 2020 edition of both competitions, it was the Lyre's Non-Alcoholic Spirits brand, created one year earlier, that was the most successful, winning several gold medals.
Finally, the wine world is also interested in non-alcoholic products. In 2020, the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles inaugurated a category "non-alcoholic or low-alcoholic wine" to promote these new drinks. For the occasion, a tasting jury was specially dedicated to this category in order to best judge the participating products. In France, the Vinalies Internationales, a competition of French oenologists and chaired by the OIV (International Organisation of Vine and Wine), decided to launch two new categories this year: an alcohol-free Wine Trophy for wines with an alcohol content of less than 0.5%; and a low-alcohol Wine Trophy for wines with an alcohol content of between 0.5 and 8.5%.
All these prestigious and influential international competitions show that alcohol-free alternatives have real legitimacy on the market. They are not just fashionable effects but categories of drinks in their own right. These competitions thus enable alcohol-free alternatives to gain in popularity and consumers to be better guided in their choice.