Thirty years ago a company called ConeTech perfected a process known as alcohol removal using thin film vacuum distillation to assist wineries with alcohol level management for tax purposes and “sweet spotting.” Today, ConeTech has morphed into BevZero, an international leader for low, non-alcoholic and infused beverage innovations across the entire spectrum of the wine, beer, cider and spirits industry to address growing consumer preferences in the drinks business. “There is a global movement towards the reduction in daily alcohol consumption, as a result of lifestyle changes, governmental regulations and continued medical warnings, and consumers are responding,” confirms Debbie Novograd, BevZero’s CEO. “BevZero was created in 2018 to provide product development, base product sourcing and advisory services to our clients in recognition of this critical trend.” BevZero has recently announced the consolidation of its services, service locations

WORRIED ABOUT SMOKE TAINT?  CONETECH CAN HELP: ConeTech received the 2019 Winnovation award for its proprietary, patented Smoke Taint Removal process. To date ConeTech has processed over 1 million gallons of wine removing both free and bound smoke taint compounds. ConeTech not only utilizes a new methodology and a combination of technologies to remove smoke taint, but also developed a new standard for analytics when testing for smoke taint in wine. The articles below provide additional information regarding ConeTech's smoke taint process:  Five Award Winning Innovations for the Wine Industry ConeTech Builds on Core Expertise to Solve for the Increasing Problem of Smoke Taint in Wine Santa Rosa lab pioneers way to remove smoke taint from Smoke Screen: As wine regions globally are impacted by wildfires and lingering smoke, scientists and industry labs are looking for ways to lessen the impact on grapes and finished wine.  Contact Jessica Smith

VA Filtration offers a brand-new process for the reduction of smoke taint from wine (ARC Process), removing not only the free taint creating the smoke aromatics, but also the bound taint from affected wine, eliminating the “rebound” effect.  VA Filtration currently holds US Patents* for free taint removal, as well as the nanofiltration-based processing of VA reduction. VA Filtration’s most recently developed three-pronged ARC Process has been operational since the start of 2020 and has been tracking for bounce back of taint in the wine treated to date.  Currently, we have not seen any return of the taint.  Using a combination of proprietary MWCO membrane elements and adsorption columns, the process can reduce the glycosides significantly per filtration pass. The following example analysis of a heavily tainted Syrah from 2017 Mendocino fires processed using the ARC Process indicates the new level of reduction achieved in two passes through the sys