The Interview: Dave Edmonds, Chief Winemaker for Kim Crawford on their new Illuminate Dealcohoholized Sauvignon Blanc

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Kim Crawford has long been one of the most recognizable names in New Zealand sauvignon blanc. For many wine drinkers including myself, the brand is synonymous with the bright, aromatic, zesty style that helped define Marlborough sauvignon blanc on shelves across North America.

So when a brand like Kim Crawford decides to make a dealcoholized wine, it signals non-alcoholic wine is no longer being treated as a fringe category or a consolation prize for people who aren’t drinking but truly becoming part of the future of wine. 

I spoke with Dave Edmonds, Chief Winemaker for Kim Crawford on the decision to create their Kim Crawford Illuminate Dealcoholized Sauvignon Blanc. He shared this strategic move didn’t come from one specific motivation but rather from watching the shift in how people were drinking.

“We started seeing moderation become a consistent behavior, not a passing trend,” Edmonds explained. “Internally, the real turning point was when we realized this wasn’t about creating a secondary product, it was about protecting and evolving the Sauvignon Blanc experience for occasions where alcohol isn’t wanted.”

Extending the line with that singular focus is what differentiates Kim Crawford. As a large global brand, they could have developed a wine without alcohol as an after-thought or focused solely on the bottom line, just to have something available to non-drinkers. 

For Kim Crawford, the goal was to create a wine that still felt like Kim Crawford.

“In the end it was about how can we deliver the same great tasting sauvignon blanc our consumers love but without the alcohol,” said Edmonds. 

Internally, the move into low and no-alcohol wine did come with some initial skepticism. As Edmonds put it, there were “a few raised eyebrows” from the winemaking team early on but that skepticism quickly shifted into curiosity and then momentum. 

“[We] had already launched a low-alcohol sauvignon blanc, so alcohol-removed wine felt like a natural next step. It wasn’t about whether we should do it, it was about doing it properly.”

The Kim Crawford team spent four years developing and refining the alcohol-removed Sauvignon Blanc before launching it in the U.S., largely because taste remains the biggest barrier in the category.

That meant starting with the wine itself. Illuminate is crafted from the same starting point, and the same quality Sauvignon Blanc they would normally use, with the same focus on varietal character, vibrancy and aromatics. The alcohol is then carefully removed using a 3rd party spinning cone with the goal of preserving as much of the original wine as possible.

“The focus is on preserving as much of that original wine as possible, capturing aromatics, maintaining balance, and ensuring it still tastes unmistakably like Kim Crawford,” Edmonds explained. “It’s less about creating something new and more about protecting the integrity of what we’ve already crafted, just in a different format.”

They’ve done a great job achieving that. The Kim Crawford Illuminate dealcoholized sauvignon blanc really reflects the original wine with grassy notes and herbal aromatics balanced with a bright acidity. It’s juicy and fresh and drinks like a white wine should.  

“We want consumers to say ‘wow this tastes like Kim and I can’t believe it doesn’t have alcohol,’” Edmonds stressed. “And we think we’ve done that.”

The larger question for the category is where non-alcoholic wine goes from here. In their view, moderation is not going away but quality will determine what happens next.

“As technology gets better, consumers won’t accept compromises, they’ll expect something that actually tastes like wine,” he said. 

For Kim Crawford, Illuminate is an evolution: sauvignon blanc for the same consumer, the same occasions, and the same expectations, just in a different format.