9 Substitutes for White Wine in Cooking (Including Alcohol-Free Options That Work)

The onions are softening, the pan is hot, the recipe says deglaze with ½ cup dry white wine — and there is no wine in the house. Or there is, but you do not drink, or you are cooking for someone who does not, and opening a bottle for two tablespoons was never the plan anyway.

Good news: white wine is one of the more forgiving things to replace, once you know what it is actually doing. In most savory recipes it contributes three things — acidity (brightness that cuts through fat), liquid (to loosen the browned bits stuck to the pan), and a bit of fruity depth. The first two are easy to rebuild. The third is the one you negotiate over.

The right pick depends on the dish and on why you are swapping. If you just ran out, a splash of vermouth or sherry is close to invisible. If you are avoiding alcohol, the answer is different — and there is a detail about cooking with alcohol that most recipes skip, so that comes first.

The Quick List

• Broth + a splash of vinegar or lemon — the standard alcohol-free fix; works nearly everywhere
• Dry vermouth — the closest flavor match, and it keeps for months (contains alcohol)
• Verjus — unfermented grape juice; the chef's alcohol-free answer
• Non-alcoholic white wine — closest alcohol-free match, but not quite 0.0%
• White grape juice + vinegar — good with pork and chicken; needs extra acid
• Apple juice + vinegar — same idea, slightly less sweet
• Dry sherry — nuttier and richer; excellent in cream sauces (contains alcohol)
• Sake — clean and delicate; the seafood pick (contains alcohol)
• Water + a splash of acid — the last resort, and better than you would guess

First, the Truth About Alcohol Cooking Off

You have heard that the alcohol burns off. It mostly does not — at least not as fast as the saying implies. The USDA Table of Nutrient Retention Factors includes measured alcohol retention by cooking method, and the numbers are worth knowing:

• Stirred into hot liquid: 85% retained
• Flamed: 75% retained
• Simmered or baked 15 minutes: 40% retained
• Simmered or baked 30 minutes: 35% retained
• Simmered or baked 1 hour: 25% retained
• Simmered or baked 2 hours: 10% retained
• Simmered or baked 2½ hours: 5% retained

So a quick pan sauce keeps most of its alcohol. A long braise gets most of it out. Nothing gets all of it out.

For most people this is trivia — the amount left in one portion of a dish made with ½ cup of wine is very small. But if you are pregnant, in recovery, avoiding alcohol for medical or religious reasons, or cooking for a child, it is the difference between a swap that matters and one that does not. If that is you, skip the vermouth, sherry, and sake sections below and go straight to broth, verjus, or juice.

Chicken or Vegetable Broth + a Splash of Acid

• Swap: 1 cup white wine → 1 cup broth + 2 teaspoons white wine vinegar or lemon juice (America's Test Kitchen uses ½ cup broth plus 1 teaspoon of either)
• Best for: Pan sauces, soups, risotto, braises, deglazing, steaming shellfish — almost everything savory
• Skip it for: Nothing much, though it will not give you wine's fruitiness
• Health notes: Broth is where the sodium sneaks in — see below

This is the answer for most people most of the time, and it is genuinely good rather than a consolation prize. Broth covers the liquid and the savory depth; the acid covers the brightness. Use vegetable broth to keep it meat-free, and a lighter one with fish so you do not bulldoze the seafood.

Two technique notes. Add the acid late — near the end of cooking — because its brightness fades with long heat, and a sauce that tasted balanced twenty minutes ago will taste flat by the time it lands. And start with less than you think: vinegar is roughly ten times more acidic than wine, so a heavy hand turns a pan sauce sour in one pour. Taste, then add more.

Dry Vermouth

• Swap: 1:1
• Best for: Pan sauces, chicken, seafood, risotto, mussels — anywhere the recipe wants dry white wine
• Skip it for: Alcohol-free cooking (it is fortified, typically 16 to 18% ABV — stronger than wine)

If you cook with wine even occasionally, this is the tip worth taking away: keep dry vermouth in the fridge instead. It is white wine fortified and infused with herbs, so it brings the same acidity and structure plus a faint botanical note. America's Test Kitchen found sauces made with vermouth a little sweeter and more herbal than the same sauces made with wine, but called the difference subtle.

The real advantage is shelf life. An open bottle of wine is tired within days — which is exactly why the two tablespoons a recipe wanted turned into a wasted bottle. Refrigerated vermouth keeps tasting good for three to nine months. Buy a decent one, keep it cold, and the problem stops happening.

Verjus

• Swap: 1:1, then taste — it is tart but not harsh
• Best for: Pan sauces, chicken, fish, risotto, dressings; the best alcohol-free option for delicate dishes
• Skip it for: Nothing culinary — the only obstacle is finding it

Verjus is the sleeper on this list. It is unripened, unfermented grape juice, pressed and bottled before fermentation can start, which makes it entirely alcohol-free while still tasting like it came from a vineyard. It has the tartaric acid character of wine without the sharpness of vinegar or the sweetness of juice — exactly the gap every other alcohol-free swap struggles to fill.

The only obstacle is finding it: look at wine shops, cheese counters, or online rather than a standard supermarket. If you cook alcohol-free regularly it is the single purchase that most improves your results, and it doubles as a vinaigrette acid. Keep it refrigerated once opened.

Non-Alcoholic White Wine

• Swap: 1:1
• Best for: Any dish where you want the wine flavor specifically — pan sauces, risotto, mussels
• Skip it for: Strict 0.0% avoidance, unless the label says so (see below)

Dealcoholized wines have improved a great deal, and in a cooked dish — where you are not scrutinizing the finish — a decent dry one is close to seamless.

One label detail matters if you are avoiding alcohol strictly. In the US, non-alcoholic means under 0.5% ABV, not zero; the term alcohol-free can only be used at 0.0% ABV. For most people the distinction is academic. For some it is the whole point, so read the bottle rather than the shelf tag.

White Grape Juice + Vinegar

• Swap: 1 cup white wine → ¾ cup white grape juice + ¼ cup water + 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
• Best for: Pork, chicken, braises, glazes, anything already a little sweet
• Skip it for: Savory cream sauces, mussels, risotto — the sweetness sticks out

Grape juice is the intuitive swap, and it is half right: it has the grape, but wine is dry and juice is not, so used straight it makes dishes taste faintly of dessert. Cutting it with water and adding real acid pulls it back toward dry. Even then it stays sweeter than wine, so taste before you commit.

Where that sweetness is an asset — a pork loin, a braise with apples, a glaze headed for the oven — this is a genuinely good swap. Where the dish is savory and delicate, use broth instead. Any everyday vinegar works; apple cider vinegar adds a fruity note that suits pork especially well.

Apple Juice + Vinegar

• Swap: 1 cup white wine → ¾ cup apple juice + ¼ cup water + 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice
• Best for: Pork, chicken, cabbage, sausage, braises
• Skip it for: Seafood and cream sauces

Same logic as grape juice, with an apple note instead of a grape one — a feature with pork, cabbage, and anything mustardy, a distraction elsewhere. Unsweetened cloudy apple juice beats the clear sweetened kind. Treat both juice swaps as flavor decisions rather than emergencies: they are not neutral, and pretending otherwise is how a delicate lemon-butter sauce ends up tasting like a marinade.

Dry Sherry

• Swap: 1:1, or start with a bit less if yours is an older, very oxidized bottle
• Best for: Cream sauces, mushroom dishes, chicken, soups, anything you want richer
• Skip it for: Alcohol-free cooking; very delicate white fish, where it overpowers

Dry sherry (fino or manzanilla, not cream sherry) brings a nutty, faintly oxidized depth that white wine does not have. In some dishes that is an upgrade rather than a substitution — mushrooms, chicken, and cream sauces all take well to it, and plenty of restaurant kitchens reach for it on purpose. Like vermouth, it is fortified, so it keeps far longer than wine once opened.

Sake

• Swap: 1:1, plus a small squeeze of lemon — sake is less acidic than wine
• Best for: Seafood, clams and mussels, light broths, stir-fries, poached chicken
• Skip it for: Alcohol-free cooking; dishes leaning European and rustic

Sake is clean, subtle, and slightly savory, which makes it a natural with shellfish and delicate fish where a sharper wine can dominate. The one adjustment is acid: sake has noticeably less than wine, so a squeeze of lemon at the end restores the lift the recipe was counting on. Dry sherry works similarly if you have that instead.

Water + a Splash of Acid

• Swap: 1 cup white wine → 1 cup water + 2 teaspoons lemon juice or white wine vinegar, added late
• Best for: Deglazing, quick pan sauces, any recipe using a small amount of wine
• Skip it for: Dishes where the wine is the sauce — a beurre blanc has nowhere to hide

This is the swap people apologize for, and it works better than its reputation. When a recipe calls for a couple of tablespoons of wine to lift the browned bits off a pan, water does that job perfectly well — the flavor was mostly in the fond, not the bottle. Add the acid at the end and most people will not notice anything is missing. It falls apart only when wine is a headline ingredient rather than a supporting one; if the dish is named after the wine, use broth, verjus, or a dealcoholized bottle instead.

Which Swap for Which Dish

Because the same substitute can be perfect in one pan and wrong in the next:

• Deglazing: Broth or plain water — the wine was mostly a solvent here. Acid at the end.
• Risotto: Broth plus a squeeze of lemon once the rice is off the heat. Wine's job is cutting the butter and cheese, so keep the acid. Vermouth is seamless if alcohol is fine.
• Cream sauces: Dry sherry or vermouth; broth plus lemon if alcohol-free. Skip the juices — sweetness plus cream goes wrong fast.
• Mussels and clams: Broth plus a generous splash of vinegar or lemon, or sake. The one place a splash is not enough — match the wine's full volume.
• Long braises: Broth, or juice plus vinegar for pork. Everything mellows over two hours, so this is the most forgiving case.
• Beurre blanc: Verjus or dealcoholized wine. Nothing else has enough to say.

The Healthier Angle: Watch the Broth, Not the Wine

Here is the part that surprises people. Nutritionally the wine in a recipe is close to a rounding error once it is divided across four servings — but the most popular substitute for it is not.

A cup of regular ready-to-serve chicken broth carries about 924 mg of sodium, roughly 40% of the 2,300 mg daily limit, for 15 calories. The USDA's low-sodium canned version comes in at about 72 mg per cup. Brands vary enormously, but the shape holds: swapping wine for broth can quietly add several hundred milligrams of sodium to a dish that had almost none — and if the recipe also has salt, capers, olives, or cheese, that adds up fast.

None of which means avoid broth. It means buy the low-sodium version, salt the dish yourself at the end, and lean on acid to do some of the work salt was doing. A squeeze of lemon makes food taste more seasoned, not less, which is the most useful trick in this entire post.

What Not to Use

• "Cooking wine." The bottle in the vinegar aisle is poor wine with salt and preservatives added — harsh-tasting, and a quarter cup can bring several hundred milligrams of sodium. If you would not drink it, do not cook with it.
• Straight vinegar, 1:1. The most common mistake. Vinegar runs 5 to 7% acidity; wine is under 1%. Always dilute it, and always taste.
• Sweet wines. Moscato, sweet Riesling, and sweet rosé make a savory sauce cloying. Dry means dry.
• Red wine, in pale dishes. Fine in hearty braises, but it turns cream sauces, risotto, and white fish an unappetizing gray-purple.
• Mirin, straight. Sweet and barely acidic — closer to sugar than wine. Sake is the rice-based swap you want.
• Skipping the acid entirely. If you take nothing else from this post: plain broth with no acid is why the substituted version tastes flat. The acid is the point.

The Bottom Line

Buy dry vermouth if you drink, verjus if you do not, and keep low-sodium broth in the pantry either way. Those three cover nearly every recipe that calls for dry white wine.

The catch with any substitution guide is that it speaks in generalities, and you are not cooking a generality — you are cooking one specific dish. That is where Eat Well Planner helps: import the recipe you are actually making and ask the AI recipe chat what to use instead. It answers with your ingredients and method in front of it, so it knows whether grape juice will clash or whether plain water is genuinely fine. Cooking alcohol-free for good? Recipe Variations rewrites the whole recipe with the swaps worked in.