There’s a fast-growing market for nonalcoholic beers, wines, and canned mixed drinks. Some researchers think there should be age limits for buying them.

Darryl Collins owns a zero-proof bottle shop called Hopscotch in Baltimore, Md., selling over 200 options of nonalcoholic spirits, beer, wine, and canned cocktails.

He opened the shop in August 2023 to get in on the booming market for adult nonalcoholic beverages. These are drinks with less than 0.5% alcohol by volume (ABV), marketed towards adults who want to cut back on drinking, avoid hangovers, or prevent other ill health effects from alcohol.

“Every day people are buying bottles of [non-alcoholic] wine – that is our top seller,” says Collins, “Outside of that, it’s going to be what we call a ready-to-drink canned beverage, like canned cocktails.”

This emerging beverage category grew steadily in the past few years and received a major boost during the pandemic; it’s now worth upwards of $500 million a year in the U.S., according to the industry trade group Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association.

Since these beverages contain virtually no alcohol, they can largely be sold to anyone, anywhere; they’re stocked on grocery and convenience store shelves around the country, and purchasable online. But Collins doesn’t sell to anybody under 18 years old at this store, and he checks ID’s to enforce that rule.

“When there’s no minimum age, can a nine-year-old come into your store and buy a non-alcoholic Corona? For me, I don’t want that perception,” Collins says.

Collins set his own age limit, and he’s free to set it however he wants because in Maryland — as in the majority of states — there are no state age restrictions on who can buy adult non-alcoholic beverages.

Now, some health researchers are calling for clear, consistent age limits for non-alcoholic beers, wines and liquors, likening them to candy cigarettes.

“I think there is a risk that these could be an entry product for alcohol use,” says Molly Bowdring, a clinical psychologist and researcher at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, who co-authored a July 8 opinion piece in JAMA Pediatrics on the topic.

“There are so many cues in non-alcoholic beverages that mirror that alcoholic counterpart,” Bowdring says, like how they taste and smell, and provide the cultural experience of sipping from a koozied beer can or a fancy glass. “Additionally, a lot of full-strength alcohol producers are now making non-alcoholic products, so their brands are on these [non-alcoholic] beverages. That might lead to familiarity that then increases the likelihood of purchasing alcoholic products from that producer in the future,” she says.

To figure out which, if any, states limited the sale of adult non-alcoholic beverages, Bowdring called every state alcohol regulator and health department in the country, along with some food regulators. She found that 39 states had no statewide policies, and the states that did were inconsistent – Michigan, for instance, restricted the sale of non-alcoholic beer to those 18 and up, but had no such policies for non-alcoholic wines or liquors.

“A couple of entities emphasized that individual retailers are able to choose to ID if they want to, but that’s really up to their discretion,” Bowdring says, “By and large, there are not restrictions on this. So this seems like a gap we want to fill sooner rather than later to get ahead of a potential public health issue.”

There’s no evidence so far that the boom in zero-proof beverages has led kids in the U.S. to drink alcohol, but Bowdring looks to the recent example of e-cigarettes as a cautionary tale. “Tobacco use was really declining among more recent generations,” she says, “And then there’s this huge marketing push for vaping, and then it led to an uptick.”

With non-alcoholic wine and liquor, Bowdring argues that there should be laws in place to get ahead of that. “If we leave the door open to there being a marketing push for non-alcoholic beverages among kids, could that then lead to increased alcohol use among this generation? We don’t want to wait to find out if that’s going to happen,” she says.

While Marcos Salazar, head of the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association, agrees that kids should not be drinking these products, he doesn’t think governments need to get involved. “We don’t want any regulation that’s going to have an impact on accessibility and cause additional resources to be spent for brands producing these products,” he says.

He notes that the widening availability of zero-proof adult drinks helps people who are trying to cut back on alcohol for their health.

Salazar says this emerging beverage industry can focus its marketing toward adults through advertising and store placement. “When you go into a retail shop or Whole Foods or Kroger and you see a set of these products, they’re usually near the alcoholic beverages and [offered] as alternatives,” he says. “It’s very clear who they’re marketed to and who they’re for.”

And he points out that some sellers, like the chain store Target, already card for the purchase of these drinks. Collins, with the 18+ bottle shop in Maryland, concurs. As an industry, “we have to self-police, because if we don’t self-police and self-regulate, that’s when government regulates,” Collins says.

HOPLAND ― Besides the millions of cases of wine bottled each year at Ray’s Station Winery off Highway 175, the massive facility has been producing something else in recent years, to the chagrin of its neighbors.

An aroma of raw sewage and rotten eggs, with notes of hot garbage and sweaty feet, permeates the air much of the time going back five years and, this year, pretty much constantly since early spring, residents say.

It’s a stench described as that of “rotting teeth” or a “pig farm” or “fecal matter”― an odor so foul it’s ruined parties, driven neighbors to shut their windows and stay indoors and has, they are sure, degraded their property values along with their quality of life―especially when the weather is warm.

“There have been moments where, like, you walk outside and you gag physically,” said one resident, Taylor Macri. “It’s so strong that you have to hold your breath and run to the car.”

And this year, “it’s gotten so much worse ― exponentially worse,” she said.

The source is wastewater from wine production and bottling activities that have expanded tremendously on the site since 2012. That’s the year that what had been Weibel Winery ― the last of several smaller operations there― was snapped up by Vintage Wine Estates amid a period of rapid acquisition that saddled it with debt and since has pushed it to the brink of bankruptcy.

At the time Vintage Wine Estates bought the property about four miles east of Highway 101, then-president Pat Roney said he planned to crush 400,000 cases of wine at the facility in the coming year.

Roney also told The Press Democrat that having a bulk processing facility in Mendocino County was advantageous because “there are no use permits required, so we can continue expanding to unlimited production up there.”

As much as 11 million cases of wine may now be bottled each year at Ray’s Station, much of it made by fast-growing Josh Cellars, though Vintage Wine Estates, whose operational offices are in Santa Rosa, owns close to three dozen brands, including at least one cider.

A call to Ray’s Station Winery bottling manager Scott Wallace was not returned. Operations head Rodrigo de Oliveira said he would find a company representative to answer questions but did not call back. A second call to his office was unanswered.

According to the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, it appears the winery’s swift expansion may have overwhelmed its wastewater treatment facilities, which regulators say are poorly designed, in disrepair and lack adequate capacity, though the system is intended to handle an average daily flow of 91,100 gallons at peak production.

The problems go beyond wretched odors and have repeatedly put groundwater and surface water connected to the Russian River at risk of contamination, in addition to violating the winery’s permit and general requirements, regulators said.

After a series of actions over several years, including four formal notices of violation, the water quality agency has issued several new orders over the past month intended to force the company to bring its wastewater treatment system under control at last.

A Draft Cease and Desist order issued Tuesday is the latest attempt by water quality regulators to bring order to a situation that, since June 17, has included a torn or punctured liner in one wastewater treatment pond and the risk of rupture and leakage in the second.

The Cease and Desist Order must be approved by the board’s six members in order to be enforceable. A hearing will be held on the matter in the first few days of October.

A Cleanup and Abatement Order and Investigative Order issued June 20 is enforceable now, however. It requires Vintage Wine Estates to develop an urgent corrective plan by Friday and provide information to regulators necessary to oversee improvements.

The most urgent problem apparently arose when wastewater somehow accumulating underneath the pond liners, backed up underground drains, though they were capped five years earlier, said Jeremiah Puget, senior environmental scientist with the water quality agency’s enforcement unit. The backed-up fluid put upward pressure on the liners so they ballooned outward and, in one case, ruptured, though regulators are still awaiting a full explanation, Puget said.

The agency’s actions go back years and are based, in part, on inspections and findings related to odor complaints raised since January 2019, as well as evidence of problems associated with the wastewater treatment system, which includes two lined aeration ponds for wastewater treatment, one treated wastewater storage pond and five rapid infiltration basins used to dispose of treated wastewater.

At least twice in recent years, an aerator has broken, including this spring, when repairs were delayed because a particular component was unavailable, winery representatives told regulators.

The aerator failure, which persisted for more than a month, happened to coincide with Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, creating havoc for neighbors who had planned to host events. It was reportedly repaired May 29, but the odor has not abated.

An earlier series of violations, from October 2022 to April 2023, involved workers found to be disposing of excess treated wastewater on green and landscaped areas around the property, a practice prohibited since the organization removed a 12-acre vineyard that once grew there, according to water quality board documents.

Staffers informed regulators that the facility’s five quarter-acre rapid infiltration basins, designed for the disposal of treated effluent, were not percolating at the expected rate. This required an alternative disposal route that regulators say threatened contamination of groundwater and surface water resources through commingling with stormwater drainage, according to board documents.

Some treated wastewater has also ended up in stormwater structures that drain to a vineyard pond across the highway, from which it can reach the Russian River, regulators say.

Other issues arose from grape pomace left over from wine production, which was stored in a corner of the property about 150 feet from the nearest home after the facility managers could find no other disposal option.

“That ended up stinking really badly,” said Ken Richter, a neighbor who plans to sell the ranch house he shares with his wife off the north edge of Highway 175.

Richter, a vineyard manager, says there’s no way the wastewater aeration ponds and other facilities are sufficient to “handle the amount of wastewater they push through,” and with only about 35 acres, 10 of them built, it seems unlikely they’ll be able to, he said.

“It’s criminal as far as I’m concerned,” Richter said. “I don’t know how they can get away with it …. Every county agency we’ve talked to has just done nothing for us.”

“It really has affected us,” said Marie Kong, one of a handful of others with rural homes just east of the winery.

Vintage Wine Estates, in a public video touting the site’s tremendous capacity and function as “the primary workhorse” for its bottling operation, said in addition, “We’re proud to be good neighbors and supporters of our community.”

But neighbors say their dreams of living in a beautiful, rural valley and enjoying time outdoors with family have been destroyed.

“They did construction for years and years and years and years and moved a whole lot of dirt for years, and for years and years and years we had construction noise,” said Kong, who, with her husband Todd, built their home in 1991. “They kept adding tanks, and it’s huge, and even that, I was like, ‘OK.’”

“… And then the smell started,” she said.

Russian Riverkeeper Executive Director Don McEnhill said the recent regulatory notices had gotten his organization’s attention, which is now looking into the matter.

“It’s pretty easy to control that environment unless you’re not trying,” he said. “This is not rocket science. It’s about making sure you have the capacity to treat the volume you have, and you have the appropriate protocols and treatment systems.

“It’s pretty simple stuff, and they shouldn’t be getting it wrong, but if you under-invest in your treatment systems or you’re undersized, that’s a real problem.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan (she/her) at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter).

This story is from an installment of The Oeno Files, our weekly insider newsletter to the world of fine wine. Sign up here.

When we recently tackled the idea of how to spot Napa Valley’s next cult wine, two concepts stood out: winemaking talent and fruit sourcing. That’s simple in theory, but it’s not easy to ascend to the rarefied air of sought-after labels like Harlan, Bond, Promontory, Screaming Eagle, and Opus One. That doesn’t stop wineries from trying. In addition to the roughly 1,000 wine brands from Napa that are already in existence, we are constantly in touch with producers who state that the first vintage of their new wine is sure to be the next big thing. It’s fair for us to be skeptical, but that doesn’t mean our eyes—and palates—aren’t always open to the possibility.

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Then came along Sign of the Dove, a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon produced from historic vineyards under the hand of Sonoma winemaker Jesse Katz. The father-and-son team behind the brand, Marc and Jake Taub, chose Katz—whose Devil Proof, Aperture, and the Setting Wines have earned him a reputation as one of the most accomplished young winemakers in the world—to lead their new project using fruit sourced from a pair of Napa’s most sought-after plots, Beckstoffer Vineyard Georges III Vineyard and Beckstoffer Missouri Hopper Vineyard. Talent, meet fruit sourcing. After tasting first vintage and digging deeper into its story, we can boldly state this is Napa Valley’s next great cult wine.

Katz and Jake met at the Aspen Food & Wine Classic five years ago, and Jake was immediately impressed with Katz’s winemaking style. They also hit it off because Jake and Katz grew up in and around the wine industry. The fourth generation of his family in the wine and spirits business, Jake is director of business development at Palm Bay International, a powerhouse in wine importation. As a child, Katz traveled the world visiting vineyards with his father, noted photographer Andy Katz. A few weeks after Jake’s initial encounter with Katz, he and his father headed to Healdsburg to check out Katz’s Aperture Cellars winery, which was under construction at the time. Blown away by facility’s design and state-of-the-art technology, the Taubs signed a deal that day for Katz to start making small lots of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon for them.

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They put themselves in good hands, as 11 of Katz’s wines have received a combined 17 perfect 100-point scores from a variety of publications, with his Devil Proof 2018 Farrow Ranch Malbec earning top marks from The Wine Advocate, The Wine Independent, and JebDunnuck.com. And in 2021, a six-liter bottle of Katz’s Cabernet Sauvignon fetched $1 million at a charity auction in New Orleans, setting the world record for most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. Katz says the fruit sourcing for Sign of the Dove was a collaborative effort; the Taubs had been contracting some grapes from these sites for another project, but Katz was able to leverage his relationship with one of the vineyard managers to access what he considers the two best blocks in the vineyard. He also teases a potential upcoming release, telling Robb Report, “We have some other world-class sites that might be coming into the portfolio in the future as well.”

The Taubs were drawn to the Beckstoffer sites in Oakville due to their provenance and proven track record. “These two vineyards offer such distinct profiles of different parts of the valley that we have always loved,” Jake tells Robb Report. “We felt they were the perfect wines to begin our project together.” He explains that Katz put his own touch on the farming through trellising techniques that provide an optimal shade-to-light environment for the grapes to allow for slow, even ripening and overall balance.

“The Beckstoffer team are some of the most talented farmers in the world,” Katz says. “I collaborate with them to drive style in the vineyard so we can fine-tune it in the winery. I make all harvesting decisions, but we collaborate on all other elements of viticulture throughout the year as a team.” Once grapes have been harvested, they are subject to a sophisticated infrared optical sorter to select only the best of the best. “This level of sorting gives us the purest expression of the fruit, without extremes, and allows us to remove underripe green berries, stems, leaves, and overripe raisins,” Katz says. He also uses an automated pump over system with air injection “to make the most concentrated and expressive wines, because we can extract when we want and how we want.” He points out that this helps him to preserve wine aromas and build texture during the entire fermentation process. Both wines matured for 22 months in the cellar: Beckstoffer Vineyard Georges III in 80 percent new French oak and Beckstoffer Missouri Hopper Vineyard in 100 percent new French oak.

Sign of the Dove 2021 Beckstoffer Vineyard Georges III Vineyard is inky violet to the eye and has aromas of Luxardo cherry, raspberry, and menthol with a touch of earthiness. A cloak of elegant tannins wraps around flavors of cassis, blackberry, dark chocolate, and a hint of tobacco leaf that lingers into the long finish. Sign of the Dove 2021 Beckstoffer Vineyard Missouri Hopper Vineyard is deep garnet in color with a purple rim. It offers a bouquet of blackberry, caramel, and crushed violet that leads to a gorgeous opening note of butterscotch on the palate. Flavors of black cherry, purple plum, milk chocolate, fennel, and lavender are set into a layer of velvety tannins that endure into a floral-scented finish. If drinking now, decant for 30 minutes before serving. Both wines will age gracefully for another 20 years or more.

The Taubs and Katz really want to keep this an “insider” offering. Besides Jake holding a private tasting for Robb Report at Carbone Privato in New York City, the wines were only submitted to one scoring publication, JebDunnuck.com, whose following is more focused than many of the more mass-market wine magazines and sites. The George III received 97 points, while the Missouri Hopper garnered a score of 97+, a solid showing for a first release.

There are several other high-profile first vintage drops this season, but as we said up front, this is the one we really have our eyes on for the fast track to success. The owner and winemaker are both young—Jake is 27, while Katz is 40—and they will be introducing Sign of the Dove through private tastings around the country and in Napa and Sonoma. While Jake lets Katz “drive the farming and winemaking,” they taste the wines together as they evolve and work on the overall profile. The Taubs chose the name because “taub” means “dove” in German, but Jake also points out that the long-gone New York City restaurant Sign of the Dove was his grandfather David’s favorite. The mosaic-inspired dove on the label is in homage to the restaurant’s mosaic floor. Sign of the Dove packs a lot of history into its vineyard sourcing, label imagery, and bottle design (which has the same shape as David’s favorite wine, Haut-Brion) and we are here to tell you it has a lengthy future as well.

Do you want access to rare and outstanding reds from Napa Valley? Join the Robb Report 672 Wine Club today.

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