Elivo Cardio Zero Red (750 mL)

Elivo belongs to Mercantia Desarrollos Alimentarios, a food-innovation lab in Silleda, in the green northwest corner of Galicia. Its founder, Ramón Bodenlle, made the first alcohol-free wine in Spain in 2008 and sold it under the name Raisin Dor; the range became Elivo Zero Zero as the category found its audience, and the winery has been refining the same question ever since — how much of a wine survives when the ethanol leaves.

Their answer is a method of their own. The wine is made conventionally first, then the alcohol is drawn off by evaporation at low temperature, with the aromatics captured through membranes and cryogenics and returned to the liquid. A second technique the house calls DEMADERA carries the character of barrel time across into the finished red. The Cardio Zero line goes further in the opposite direction, built from grapes and processes chosen to raise the phenolic content of what ends up in the glass.

A 2017 research project earned the house its Halal certification, and its bottles have travelled since — to the Gulf from 2016, then to Southeast Asia and China. For a Galician lab that started with one bottle and a question, that is a long way from Silleda.