Australia's growing thirst for alcohol-free wine and beer
Australian entrepreneur Irene Falcone's enthusiasm is as bright as the labels on the non-alcoholic wine and beer that fill the shelves in her ground-breaking store - Sans Drinks - on Sydney's affluent Northern Beaches.
"This is the first non-alcoholic bottle shop in Australia and I picked a location directly across the road from a major liquor store," she says.
Major Australian brewers are reporting an "explosion" in the popularity of non-alcoholic beer. Retail heavyweights BWS and Dan Murphy's say sales of alcohol-free beer have more than doubled in the past 12 months, making it one of their fastest growing categories.
"Drinking this stuff is fun, it's cool and it is not daggy [unfashionable] like it used to be," says Ms Falcone.
Australia has a hard-drinking reputation forged from its early days as a British penal colony, where rum was used as a de facto currency alongside English guineas and Indian rupees.
