How do you store an opened bottle of alcohol-free?

Ethanol inhibits the growth of micro-organisms, and in dealcoholised wine that inhibition has largely been removed.

Researchers published in European Food Research and Technology that dealcoholised wines with 30 to 50 grams of residual sugar per litre are susceptible to microbial spoilage, precisely because the alcohol has been removed.

Their conclusion is that shelf life depends on sulphur dioxide or sorbic acid. For you at home, that means: store it cold and do not leave it standing too long.

Four degrees is the advice: the Voedingscentrum names that temperature for the fridge, because products spoil less quickly there and bacteria hardly grow.

So put an opened bottle of alcohol-free wine, cider or sparkling wine in the fridge and not back in the rack in the room.

Check every now and then that your fridge is really at four degrees. The Voedingscentrum points out that a fridge that is too warm makes products spoil sooner than the date on the packaging indicates.

Closing and chilling is the key: use a stopper that clamps onto the neck and stand the bottle upright in the refrigerator.

Carbon dioxide escapes faster from a warm bottle than from a cold one. The four degrees that the Voedingscentrum recommends for the refrigerator therefore help in two ways.

If you still can’t finish the bottle, pour the rest into a smaller bottle that you fill completely. Less air above the drink means less oxidation.

Alcohol-free substitutes for spirits lack the alcohol that keeps an ordinary gin or vermouth shelf-stable for years.

So read the label on the bottle. The producer states on it whether the bottle must go in the fridge after opening and how long the contents then stay good.

When in doubt, the same rule applies as for alcohol-free wine: cap on, fridge at four degrees, and smell and look before you pour.

Alcohol-free beer in the Netherlands may contain at most 0.1 percent alcohol by volume, as laid down in article 7c of the Warenwetbesluit Gereserveerde aanduidingen.

According to article 7d of the same decree, low-alcohol beer is above 0.1 and at most 1.2 percent by volume. The Alcohol Act itself only covers drinks with more than half a percent alcohol by volume.

For wine the limit is different. The OIV framework that the European Union adopted puts dealcoholised wine at no more than 0.5 volume percent; above that it is called partially dealcoholised.