Sutter Home

Sutter Home is one of California's best-known wineries, a family-run operation in St. Helena, Napa Valley, that has spent the better part of a century making wine accessible to ordinary drinkers. The winery dates back to 1874, but its modern story begins in 1948 when Italian immigrant Mario Trinchero bought a derelict Prohibition-era building and began producing wine under the Trinchero Family Estates umbrella. Today it's the fourth largest winery in the United States, producing around 10 million cases a year.

The brand carries a minor piece of wine history: in 1972, a fermentation accident left a batch of Zinfandel with residual sweetness. Rather than discard it, the winery bottled it as White Zinfandel. The style became the best-selling premium wine in the US by the late 1980s, turning a mistake into a category.

Sutter Home's alcohol-free work is concentrated in its Fre sub-brand, launched in 1992 and now positioned as the market-leading alcohol-removed wine in America. Fre starts with real wine made from Californian grapes, then removes the alcohol using a spinning cone column, a low-temperature process that preserves aroma and flavour better than older dealcoholisation methods. The resulting wines come in at under 0.5% ABV. The range covers Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Red Blend, Rosé, White Zinfandel, Moscato, and a Sparkling Brut.

In the UK, the wines sometimes appear under the Sutter Home name rather than Fre, as with the Chardonnay stocked at ASDA. The product is the same regardless of what's on the label.

Fre is listed separately in this database with its own entry. Sutter Home as a brand represents the wider winery, whose primary business remains conventional wine. The AF range is a long-standing commitment rather than a recent pivot, but it sits within a much larger portfolio that spans dozens of mainstream varietals at entry-level price points.

The Collection

Chardonnay