A person pouring a Feral drink into a wine glass.

Non-alcoholic drinking turns Feral

16 Jan 2026

Journalist

Italy’s Feral Drinks offers a sophisticated take on alcohol-free drinking, with products designed specifically to be paired with food. We spoke to founder Maddalena Zanoni

When Maddalena Zanoni left the corporate food world to start her own business in Trentino, Italy, making non-alcoholic drinks to pair with food, sommeliers were not interested in what she had to say. Chefs at the country’s best restaurants, on the other hand, saw that Zanoni could potentially help them solve a problem.

“I was writing to restaurants on Instagram and they were immediately responding… they wanted to have non-alcoholic drinks that would be gastronomic and at the level of their food,” she says.

Zanoni has always loved food and wine; she even studied to be a sommelier, but she says, as a “very tiny person,” she could “never really hold a lot of alcohol.” With many alcohol-free wines being unutterably bad, she wanted to create a wine alternative or a ‘proxy’ as they’ve become known, that stood up on its own and that would pair perfectly with food.

“I thought that the market was getting ready for something that wouldn't be another alcohol-free gin or beer, but rather something that would be food friendly and explorative,” she says.

Now, five years on, Zanoni’s brand, Feral Drinks, is producing 150,000 bottles a year with a plan to double that in 2026. They’ve just launched in the UK after proving a hit in the Benelux countries, the Nordics, and even Italy. “The last 12-18 months, it's a huge change… sommeliers are actually calling us,” she says.

More than half of Feral's team of 10 "explorative gastro-lovers" have a scientific background – in microbiology or food science, for example. This is important, says Zanoni, because the focus is always on the products and “it's really difficult to have a product [like this] that is repeatable, that is actually stable,” she says.

Those products so far include four still drinks and a pet nat. The still drinks are made using lacto-fermentation, where lactic acid bacteria break down the sugars without creating C02 or alcohol. The sparkling pet nat is fermented using yeast, so a small amount of alcohol is produced (0.3-0.4%), but not enough for it to be considered alcoholic. Ingredients are largely organic and sourced from local producers.

The foundation for many of the drinks is beet, because, Zanoni says, they wanted to take something that is "undervalued” and celebrate it. It also develops a significantly different flavour profile when fermented.

“We tried different kinds of ingredients and in particular, the white beet gave us a lot of pride and emotion when we saw that before the fermentation, it was a bit dirty, very earthy, very sweet. Then after the fermentation, it became fresh, acidic, it was smelling like flowers… in that wow moment, we thought, okay, the beet is a good representation of our DNA.”

“I wouldn't say that it's going to be forever just beets," she continues. “We also have a product that is based more, for example, on birch sap.”

On top of this root-vegetable foundation, Feral adds flavours like Szechuan pepper and hops (their most popular flavour, says Zanoni), ginger and allspice, and for a great accompaniment to game, lavender and juniper on top of red beet. Another flavour, produced in collaboration with chef Norbert Niederkofler and his three-Michelin-star Atelier Moessmer restaurant, an hour and a half’s drive north in Alto Adige, is based on white beet, linden honey and fennel. Zanoni intends to collaborate like this once a year. The chefs, you see, have always been on Feral’s side.

“Chefs know about fermentation. From the very beginning – [when] it was me and a couple of friends – they already wanted to buy it when we didn't have a bottle, a brand, a label or anything. So I thought, okay, maybe there's something more interesting here than just a hobby.”

Feral also has fans, finally, in the winemaking community.

“We’re in Trentino, a wine-making area, very beautiful, surrounded by mountains, full of winemakers, and they all came over telling us why it's amazing that instead of trying to pretend to be wine, we do something else.”

2026 will see a strong focus on the UK, a market Zanoni says has huge potential; Brits are drinking less than ever before, with almost one in three intending to abstain from alcohol this month for Dry January. You’ll be able to sample Feral not just at fine-dining restaurants like Joro in Sheffield, Restaurant 22 in Cambridge and Muse in London, but also alongside the team, with local events planned. “I think you need to be there when you want to create a brand,” says Zanoni.

So if you’re planning to be abstinent for the month or long term, sober curious or just fancy something different, your mealtimes just got that bit more delicious.