Guide
Reverse osmosis, explained
Pressure, a membrane, and a flavor fraction put back together without most of the ethanol. It is removal. It is not a synonym for filtered.
Reverse osmosis is a way to take ethanol out of a liquid that already had it. The drink is pushed against a membrane. Small molecules, including water and ethanol, pass. A thicker flavor fraction stays behind. The alcohol-rich stream is dealt with, often by distillation, and the flavor fraction is put back together with liquid that no longer carries that alcohol.
It is not a pot still. It is also not “cold filtered” as a mood. Cold sterile filtration, a finishing filter, and reverse osmosis are different sentences. We will not upgrade the word filtered to this method. The cellar index, with the bottles whose sources actually name it, is Reverse osmosis.
What it is not
A spinning cone is a vacuum column. Vacuum distillation is heat under reduced pressure. Osmotic distillation is another membrane process, and it is not this one. The map of the machines is How is alcohol removed from wine?. The comparison that people actually confuse is spinning cone vs vacuum distillation.
If a producer will not name the equipment, the review says Undeclared. That is a known removal with an unknown tool. It is not reverse osmosis by default, and it is not a guess we paper over because the category is hard. How The Dry Standard checks a claim.
The bottles below are the ones in this cellar with a cited reverse-osmosis method. The link is the evidence. The score, when there is one, is a tasting of that bottle, not a grade for the machine.