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food / travel

Introducing The World's First Halal Sparkling Wine

Muslim guests at celebrations will no longer have to stand around with a Coke in their hands. For Munich's Four Seasons Hotel, a local company has produced the first-ever non-alcoholic sparkling wine made in accordance with Islamic law.

Tasting Dinar
Tasting Dinar
Franz Kotteder

MUNICH — There are many reasons to indulge in a glass of sparkling wine or champagne. Some drink it to keep their blood pressure even, some simply find it just wonderfully refreshing. Most of the time, we pop a cork to mark an occasion or celebration, and to let our hair down with a little alcohol.

But there's actually an enormous market for people who don't drink alcohol, as the Munich-based company Vigorous Trading has discovered. The company imports oriental foods for clients, among them the Four Seasons Hotel in Munich, whose summer clientele consists of many Muslim guests. Because their religion forbids them to drink alcohol, the hotel's chief purchaser Sinan-Renan Yaman asked Vigorous Trading's general manager Alexander Ludwig Berg if the company could find some non-alcoholic sparkling wine. He must have felt badly for the monied guests standing around at receptions clutching nothing more festive than a glass of water or Coke.

Berg shared Yaman's sentiment and went in search of producers, finding one in Rüdesheim who makes a Riesling-quality sparkling wine that is entirely non-alcoholic. In fact, the alcohol extraction method is so thorough that the final product actually contains fewer traces of alcohol than orange juice. And that's why it's the only sparkling wine in the world to be halal-certified, meaning that it is prepared in accordance with Islamic law.

The drink is called Dinar, so named for the Arab currency and for the very first Umayyad coin minted in the eighth century. The bottles actually feature a stylized coin on their dark exteriors.

To mimic the taste of alcohol, a flavor alternative needed to be found — and Berg discovered that the juice from dates and pomegranates did the trick. The sparkling date wine is slightly tangy and therefore a good match to the alcoholic original, whereas the pomegranate version is slightly sweet, which "women seem to be partial to," Berg says.

The new drink has been available since September and will premiere at the United Arab Emirates (UAE) embassy during mid-December for its national bank holiday celebrations. "Unfortunately, September was too late in the season" for most of their Arab guests to try the new drink, says Sinan-Renan Yaman, as they "usually visit between April and late August."

But next season will be here before they know it, and when the hotel's gourmet restaurant is closed during the summer season, it may be converted into an Arab pub where plenty of corks will pop from Dinar bottles.

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Geopolitics

Senegal's Democratic Unrest And The Ghosts Of French Colonialism

The violence that erupted following the sentencing of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison left 16 people dead and 500 arrested. This reveals deep fractures in Senegalese democracy that has traces to France's colonial past.

Image of Senegalese ​Protesters celebrating Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Protesters celebrate Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — For a long time, Senegal had the glowing image of one of Africa's rare democracies. The reality was more complicated than that, even in the days of the poet-president Léopold Sedar Senghor, who also had his dark side.

But for years, the country has been moving down what Senegalese intellectual Felwine Sarr describes as the "gentle slope of... the weakening and corrosion of the gains of Senegalese democracy."

This has been demonstrated once again over the last few days, with a wave of violence that has left 16 people dead, 500 arrested, the internet censored, and a tense situation with troubling consequences. The trigger? The sentencing last Thursday of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison, which could exclude him from the 2024 presidential elections.

Young people took to the streets when the verdict was announced, accusing the justice system of having become a political tool. Ousmane Sonko had been accused of rape but was convicted of "corruption of youth," a change that rendered the decision incomprehensible.

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