Fraudonnay — Non-Alcoholic Sauvignon Blanc, 2025

Description

Double Gold · 96 Points · Judged Blind

Judged blind at actual shelf price by a trade-buyer panel of minimum four.

Grapefruit pith, white flowers and cut grass, with a flint edge underneath. Bright, mouth-watering acidity, white peach and lime zest, and a finish that stays dry and long. It has the weight this category usually lacks — and nobody guesses.

25 calories a glass. Less than 0.5% ABV.

They didn’t know what it was.

Fraudonnay was poured into a coded glass. No bottle. No label. A panel of professional wine buyers — restaurateurs, retail buyers, distributors, importers — tasted it alongside the field and scored it 96 points.

They gave it Double Gold. The competition’s top award, and it requires a unanimous vote of the panel. It was the only Sauvignon Blanc in the field to earn it.

These are people who buy wine for a living, judging at actual shelf price, instructed to award nothing they wouldn’t stock and sell. That is not a critic’s score. That is a purchase decision.

The first taste

Pale gold in the glass, and it moves the way wine moves.

The nose arrives before the glass does. Grapefruit pith and white flowers, then that green snap of cut grass after rain, with a flint edge running underneath it — the kind of stony lift you look for in a good Sancerre and almost never find outside the Loire.

The first sip is the one that changes the room. Acidity strikes clean and mouth-watering across the whole palate, and then the fruit fills in behind it: white peach, lime zest, a whisper of honeydew. There is weight here. Texture. It does not thin out and vanish the way this category always does — it stays, it builds, it finishes long and bone dry.

Pour it cold. Pour it with oysters, with a bright ceviche, with goat cheese and too much conversation.

Then watch someone reach for the bottle to check what they’ve been drinking.

The wine

Sauvignon Blanc from three Washington State appellations. Yakima Valley (42%) for  structure, acidity and the dry finish. Wahluke Slope (34%) for body and ripe stone  fruit. Ancient Lakes (24%) for aromatics — grapefruit, citrus lift, cut grass. High desert fruit with the natural acidity to survive dealcoholization with its character  intact.

What that gets you

Twenty-five calories a glass instead of one hundred and twenty. No hangover. No compromise on the wine itself. Pour it at dinner and the only person who knows is you.

Delicious deception.

The details

750ml · Less than 0.5% ABV · 25 calories per 5oz serving · Vegan · Gluten-free · No added sugar 2025 vintage, Vineyards: Holmason (Yakima Valley) · Rosebud (Wahluke Slope) · Evergreen (Ancient Lakes). Lot 254 · UPC 199284386464 Ships nationwide as an ordinary parcel — no liquor license, no adult signature, no state restrictions