Alcohol-free wine is an emerging and unsettled market category. It is neither fully integratedinto the established category of conventional wine nor clearly established as a distinct beveragecategory with its own conventions, meanings, and exchange structures. This study examines howselected European wine industry actors participate in the creation and development of this emergingmarket category.A qualitative research design was used, based on semi-structured interviews with twelveinformants representing wineries, technology providers, brand founders, market experts, andalternative beverage actors across several European markets. The study was complemented by fieldobservations conducted at the Casa Emma estate and Zeero facility in Tuscany, Italy, and bysupplementary material from the ProWein 2026 industry panel on next-generation drinking. Theanalysis followed a Gioia-inspired structure, moving from first order concepts to second orderthemes and four aggregate dimensions.The findings show that selected actors participate in market creation through three connectedactivities. First, actors frame the emerging category through health and moderation accounts,responses to declining wine consumption, future relevance arguments, and generational change, butthese framings do not converge into a single shared account, confirming that the category boundaryis still being negotiated. Second, actors establish product credibility through base wine selection,dealcoholisation technology, sensory rebuilding, brand architecture, and premium positioning,navigating a structural tension between wine connection and product difference that has no singlecorrect resolution. Third, actors build acceptance among consumers and market intermediariesthrough education, tastings, gastronomy contexts, and trade engagement, with professionalscepticism representing a persistent deficit of sociopolitical legitimacy that direct sensory trial is theprimary mechanism for addressing.The study contributes to market creation and market studies literature by showing that thedevelopment of an emerging market category depends on the combined and simultaneous work ofproduct credibility, category definition, and market acceptance, and that these activities aremutually reinforcing rather than sequential.