Taste Radio

When Amanda Thomson launched Noughty Wines, a pioneering brand of dealcoholized wines, in 2019, she was, in essence, flying blind.  There was no non–alcoholic wine category to speak of, little in the way of market research and certainly no blueprint on how to build the type of company that she envisioned.  But Amanda, a former BBC journalist and broadcaster, did have a gut feeling. There were, she believed, millions of people like her who sought high-quality wines made without alcohol. It turns out that she was right. Six years after Noughty’s debut, non-alcoholic wine has emerged as a mainstream concept, and is commonly seen in drink menus at restaurants and bars as well as in grocery and liquor stores across the U.S. In the following interview, Amanda talks about how she charted an unknown path for non-alcoholic wines, why creating “absolute trust” in the purity of Noughty wine is key to the brand’s resonance with consumers, and why she advises early-stage founders to think about what they want to achieve w