Bold Aromas, Complex Flavors, Zero Alcohol: Introducing Glasrose

The nonalcoholic yet adult-aimed beverage world continues to explode, with NA beers, alcohol-removed wines, and mocktail menus ever-more ever-present. Into this category comes Glasrose, a Santa Ynez Valley–grown brand of verjus launched by American opera singer Sara  Hershkowitz and German writer-musician-winemaker Max Hoetzel. 

Verjus is made from wine grapes that are picked at lower sugars with high acidities, and then Glasrose enhances that base with herbal, flower, spice, tea, and fruit elements. The current two releases are the white Yuzu & Elderflower, made from malvasia grapes and costarring green tea, white pepper, and pink Himalayan salt; and the pink Hibiscus Blood Orange, based on syrah and featuring black pepper, cardamom, and birch bark. 

The aromas on each are incredibly powerful, and then the palate more deftly integrates the components into complex, smoothed out expressions. They don’t really compete with the sensory specifics of alcoholic wine as we know it, which tends to be more subtle. But they do serve a similar role as nuanced beverages to start conversations, pair with cuisine, and quench thirst in interesting ways.   

To learn more about Glasrose and the faces behind the brand, I asked Hoetzel and Hershkowitz a few questions. Here’s what they had to say. 

Tell us about each of your backgrounds.

Sara Hershkowitz: I’m an opera singer and a native of Venice, California. After getting my degree from Manhattan School of Music, I moved to Germany and sang opera full-time for nearly 18 years. My focus was on baroque and contemporary classical music, and I performed with orchestras and opera houses in Europe, Asia and Latin America. 

My performer life was meaningful, but I also felt really disconnected from nature and longed to live somewhere where I could be surrounded by stillness, plants, and animals. I always had a lifelong fascination with herbalism. And even though most my adult life was spent living out of a suitcase and traveling, I had this image of myself living on a farm. I’m also a writer, and I always found everything to do with grapes very poetic and moving, even though I rarely drank.

Max Hoetzel: I originally moved to America as a writer and photographer. I was a journalist for a large German publisher, but I also authored a handful of books on topics that fascinated me, such as Route 66, American diner culture, etc. I’m also a life-long musician, I play banjo and guitar and have recorded with people like David Sandborn, Rick Astley, and my favorite singer — my love, Sara, with whom I formed an Americana band in 2021 called Sara Shiloh Rae and Bluebird Junction (our album’s available on Spotify). 

At one point, I decided I didn’t just want to write about people doing interesting things; I wanted to do them myself. So in 2013, I moved to Santa Ynez to learn how to make wine. Steve Clifton graciously took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. I had a tasting room in Los Olivos called F2 wines, mostly focused on Bordeaux.

What prompted the change from wine to non-alc? 

MH: I stopped making wine in 2020 and focused on soil health and transforming the conventionally farmed vineyard that we live on into an organically farmed one. 

Me getting sober happened by accident. Sara was never a big drinker to begin with, but I wanted to do Dry January in 2023, just out of curiosity. The spoiler is that, shockingly, I really loved how it felt. One month turned to two and then three, and I wound up never going back. 

In that time, we tasted just about every non-alc on the market, and while there are some good ones, we didn’t taste anything that we fell in love with. We definitely did not want to go the route of de-alcoholizing wine. So the idea was born to make a verjus-based sparkling ourselves, from the grapes we grow. Verjus is an early picked grape, with high acidity and very low sugar, picked at about 12 brix.

What’s the mission for Glasrose? 

SH: Besides a really delicious and special drink, kindness, inclusivity, connection, and true health (both physical and mental) are what we hope to showcase. 

We’ve been really fortunate to have a viral social media. Through small video vignettes of our lives on the farm, of us sitting around a table with loved ones, with cakes, baking, coffee roasting, herbalism, tea, music, family together time, etc. We want to show that life can be colorful, creative and full of whimsy without needing to drink alcohol. 

All of it is meant to serve human connection. It’s been said that the opposite of addiction is connection and we think that is so true. This is probably what most of us truly want and need most in life, as it’s the real medicine.

How do you select and source what ingredients to use? Was there a lot of testing? 

SH: Yes there absolutely was! Our R&D period lasted about two years and was by no means a linear process. We played with a lot of our favorite botanicals, herbs, spices, teas, etc to layer on top of the verjus. We knew we wanted to work with yuzu and elderflower, and we knew we wanted to incorporate blood orange as well. Toward the end, we brought Taylor Parsons and David Rossoff on board, who were amazing in helping us narrow down and really focus on what worked best together. 

Are there plans to expand beyond these two flavors? Will they change with the vintages?

SH: Yes! Glasrose is fundamentally a vineyard product, so there will be variations based on the year — but it will stay within a similar range. One exciting thing on the immediate horizon, we are coming out with a line of pure verjus, which are bottled by single varietal. In March we will have a syrah and a malvasia available. They taste incredible straight up over ice in a whiskey glass but are also a fabulous base for cocktails and mocktails. And later this year we will launch two more iterations of the sparkling beverage as well.

What unique challenges exist in non-alc that people may not be aware of? 

MH: Well, when you start making verjus, you realize how powerful yeast is, and badly things want to ferment. You realize what a complex process it is (to make a high quality verjus). We’ve also been really pleased by the response to Glasrose, in that it seems be enjoyed by wine lovers and sober folks equally. 

Most of our following are what we call flexi-drinkers, so they do enjoy wine but occasionally may want to pace themselves, or have an evening or two that are alcohol-free, while still drinking something that feels sophisticated and intentional, and something that is first and foremost a vineyard experience.

See glasrose.com.