€1.5 million raised to ferment alcohol-free grape juice

ontroversy is not always a bad thing. At the start of the year, Villa Noria attracted plenty of it when it released a range of organic fermented Chardonnay, Syrah and Pinot Noir juice using bacteria and non-Saccharomyces yeast-based leaven. That publicity has now enabled its two directors, Fabien Gross and Cédric Arnaud, to raise €715,000 from 215 lenders on the crowdfunding platform Miimosa in just ten days. A further €785,000 from a conventional bank loan gives the company €1.5 million to complete “the world’s first alcohol-free winery”.

The partners will initially be using the money to increase the storage capacity for their fresh must produced from some of their 95 hectares under vine in Montagnac, Hérault. “We have bought new temperature-controlled tanks equipped with cleaning systems to prevent premature fermentation”, explains Fabien Gross. Other investments include a series of fermenters that look like they’re designed for wine but actually operate like cheese tanks, “with management systems that can ensure fermentations are entirely automated and replicable”. The new equipment will boost production from 100,000 to 400,000 bottles of Levin, and maybe more in the future as Villa Noria has replanted 14 hectares of vines over the past two years.

To guarantee a perfectly sterile product for their customers without having to using any inputs – “no citric acid, sulphites or dimethyl dicarbonate…” – in two months’ time, Gross and Arnaud will also be installing a tunnel that can pasteurise bottles that have already been corked.

Before ordering the cutting-edge equipment, Gross checked that it was compatible with re-usable bottles, which are important in helping him reduce his carbon footprint as much as possible. Though he adds, “non-alcoholic fermentation already uses four times less energy than de-alcoholisation”.