Sutter Home FRE Merlot (750 mL)

FRE has been making alcohol-removed wine in St. Helena, California since 1992, which makes it older than the category it belongs to. It started at Sutter Home’s winery in the Napa Valley and it has been the bottle most Americans encounter first ever since — on a supermarket shelf, at a baby shower, at the table of somebody who is not drinking tonight.

The grapes come from across California, from the cool coastal sites of Monterey County up into Napa, and the wine is made in full first, by ordinary methods. Then it goes into a spinning cone column: rotating cones spread it into a thin film, nitrogen carries the aromatics off at low temperature so they are not cooked, and a second pass at higher heat takes the alcohol. The aromas go back in, and unfermented juice from the same variety replaces what left.

That last step is why FRE tastes the way it does — rounder and fruitier than a bottle that has simply had its alcohol stripped, and sweeter than most of what sits beside it. The house calls it the sophisticated alternative on every label. What it really is, is the bottle that got there first and stayed.