How The Dry Standard checks a claim

A fact on a review is only as strong as the source that supports it. Tasting notes are opinion. ABV, production type, and the removal machine are not. They are printed when a source says them, and left alone when it does not.

This page is the source order. Scoring rules live on the methodology page. The production classes live in Dealcoholized is not the same as non-alcoholic.

What carries a claim

Sources are not equal. On a review, the public label follows the source:

Bottle verified — the package or label states the fact.
Producer documented — the producer’s technical note or product page states it.
Official documentation — a government or regulatory record.
Distributor sourced — an importer or distributor sheet.
Secondary source — press, a registry, or another report that is not the producer.
Retailer sourced — a shop listing.
Unverified — the claim is in the catalog without a source strong enough to settle it.

A producer technical sheet outranks a product-page sentence. A product page outranks a retailer. A retailer can still be the right source for a price or a package size. It is a weak source for how the alcohol was removed.

What a retailer cannot finish

A confident product description is not a process. “Dealcoholized,” “alcohol-free,” and “filtered” show up on shop pages that never name a machine, and sometimes on pages that name the wrong one.

Dr. Heidemanns-Bergweiler Riesling is the pattern. Retail catalog copy describes a dealcoholized Riesling and states 0.0%. The estate factsheets we have do not cover this alcohol-free bottle, and they do not name the equipment. The review can print the retail residual and the dealcoholized description. It cannot print a vacuum still, a spinning cone, or a membrane. The machine line stays Technique undeclared. The 0.0% is a retailer figure, not an estate measurement.

Oddbird GSM is the other pattern. The producer documents the wine, the vacuum distillation, and a stated 0.0%. Those facts sit on a stronger source than a shop blurb. The score is still a separate thing: it exists because the bottle was tasted.

The class is not the machine

Dealcoholized means a cited source shows alcohol was removed from an alcoholic liquid. Vacuum distillation, spinning cone, reverse osmosis, and the other named processes are how that removal was done, when a source names the equipment.

The two fields are not synonyms. A bottle can be dealcoholized with the machine unnamed. An alternative was never that liquid. Naturally low alcohol finishes at or below 0.5% ABV without a removal step. Arrested fermentation is that path, not a dealcoholization method.

How is alcohol removed from wine? is the map of the machines. Each method page is the cellar index for one of them.

What we do not fill in

Silence is not a zero, and it is not a method.

0.0% is printed when a source states that residual. “Alcohol-free” or “non-alcoholic” is not upgraded into 0.0%. The split is 0.0% vs under 0.5%.
Undeclared ABV means no citable number.
Technique undeclared means removal is supported and the machine is not.
Unclassified means the factory floor cannot be placed. Erdinger Alkoholfrei is the public case: the brewery has refused to describe the process, and a residual under 0.5% does not choose between removal and a short fermentation.
Withheld is that on-record refusal. It is not the same as a missing page we have not found yet.

Label law is not one sentence worldwide. This site reviews drinks at or below 0.5% ABV. It does not treat one country’s rule as the definition of non-alcoholic everywhere.

Disagreements stay visible. If two sources name two residuals, the review records both. It does not invent the average.

The Dry List is three bottles, one verified claim, and one worth buying. Get the list.