The World Alcohol-Free Awards is excited to announce a new partnership for 2025 with Coravin, the world-leaders in by-the-glass systems.

Coravin's classic Timeless system is famous for allowing restaurants to offer wines by-the-glass without fear of wastage, as for the first time ever venues were able to pour wine without actually opening the bottle. Coravin have also developed a system for sparkling wines, as well as a fast-pour Pivot system, which works across all closure types and is designed to keep bottles pristine for months rather than years.

WAFA will be showing off a Pivot system at its 2025 judging days, with a three-way tasting of the same alcohol-free brand under various stages of preservation: one bottle that's been opened but kept under Coravin for a month; one bottle that's been opened for a month and stored with a traditional stopper rather than Coravin; and a bottle freshly-opened on the day. We will be encouraging our expert judges to do a 'taste test' to see if they can spot the difference.

We will also be working with Coravin to carry out a longer, laboratory-condition test with a range of alcohol-free products, to see how long they can be preserved. We will reveal the results to our judges via a dedicated webinar with Coravin founder Greg Lambrecht - and to our readers through articles on the website and social media.

At the WAFA stand at London Wine Fair, we will be using the Coravin Pivot to keep some of our Gold Medal winners fresh throughout the duration of the show, allowing hundreds of people to experiment with the system and see what it can do with alcohol-free drinks.

'We're absolutely delighted by our partnership with Coravin this year,' said WAFA director Chris Losh. 'Keeping alcohol-free drinks fresh is one of the biggest challenges - and also one of the most overlooked. The activities we are working on with Coravin will show just how important this issue is - and how Coravin gives everyone from bartenders and sommeliers to retailers and members of the public the ideal tool to ensure constant quality in their alcohol-free drinks.'