What “Undeclared” method means

Production type answers how a drink became nonalcoholic: dealcoholized, alternative, naturally low alcohol, hybrid, or unclassified. Method answers a narrower question: which removal path, if any, a cited source names for that bottle.

When the type is dealcoholized or hybrid and no exact-product sentence names vacuum distillation, spinning cone, reverse osmosis, forward osmosis, membrane filtration, or another documented path, we print Undeclared. That is not a marketing posture and not a sixth classification. It is a gap on the record.

What Undeclared is not

It is not Withheld. Withheld is an on-record refusal to name the process. Undeclared is silence or conflict after research: the producer page, label, and importer sheet do not settle the machine, or sources disagree and we will not invent a winner.

It is not Unclassified. Unclassified means we cannot place production type at all. A bottle can be firmly dealcoholized and still Undeclared on method.

It is not “proprietary.” We do not print Proprietary, Classified, or Refused as the method field. If the house refuses on the record, disclosure is Withheld. If they simply never say, method stays Undeclared.

Why the count can rise

Classifying a bottle from Unclassified to dealcoholized while leaving the technique blank is a stricter public record, not a decline in quality. The cellar then shows more Undeclared methods because more bottles have a real production type to hang that gap on. See Dealcoholized is not the same as nonalcoholic.

What we do instead

We keep the type when a source supports removal or construction. We leave the method blank until an exact-product sentence supports a named path. We ask producers for technical sheets or back-label photographs rather than guessing from a sibling SKU or a house FAQ that does not name this bottle.

For named equipment that we can cite, see Spinning cone vs vacuum distillation and Reverse osmosis explained. For bottles whose producers declined to name the process, see the Process withheld collection.

In the cellar

Compare holds up to four. Want to try keeps a bottle in My Bottles.