Benjamin Bridge: Nova 0 Non-alcoholic Sparkling Review

Benjamin Bridge Winery is a highly-regarded winery in Nova Scotia, Canada, infamous for producing the provinces most popular sparkling wine called Nova 7. This fall, they’ve launched a new non-alcoholic option called Nova 0, as an addition to their existing Piquette Zero wines.

Our guest contributor Joanna Piros did a deep dive with the winery about their beautiful ethos and their goals for producing one of the first Canadian wines dealcoholized from an existing premium artisanal wine. Read It Here.

Interestingly, Nova Zero is not made from dealcoholized wine. Instead, the Benjamin Bridge winemaker used a unique and proprietary process involving Muscat grape must, trace amounts of wine, and other natural ingredients to create this inclusive iteration of Nova 7. It’s not an exact dupe, is what they’re saying, but rather an experience similar to the original. A great concept for innovation and shifting the category away from the “this doesn’t taste exactly the same as wine” complaints. It’s really about the experience of having an elevated drink in a wine glass, that doesn’t have alcohol and doesn’t taste like grape juice.

Here are our Nova Zero tasting notes.

Aroma

On the nose, Nova Zero is semi-sweet with a soft aroma of lychee, grapefruit and a hint of rose aromatics. Nice and fresh!

Taste

Without being able to compare it to the original Nova 7, it’s not hard to imagine the resemblance, as there is a hint of salinity and a hint of minerality from the east coast soil. To the average wine drinker, this won’t jump out at you at first, but it grows on you as you become more aware of the liquid you’re drinking.

It’s on the sweet side, which was unexpected, but the 15g of sugar don’t detract from the flavour. It’s very elegant, crisp and refreshing. It’s a fun combination of grapefruit, green apple candy, and a hint of something floral and sweet, with a lively finish.

The taste is very different from other non-alcoholic sparkling wines, and similar to Piquette, it’s got it’s own character as a ‘wine-style’ drink.

It’s bubbly and light on the tongue - quite fun to drink.

Overall

This wasn’t what I expected from Nova 0, but in the end, I genuinely enjoyed the experience of it and could understand the essence of the original vintage. Being constructed from the bottom up, without dealcoholizing an existing wine, means that it’s not stripped down but rather full of unique characteristics.

This is going to be excellent as a portable wine-style drink, chilled and ready to enjoy with appetizers and other party foods.

You can order Nova 0 through Benjamin Bridge’s website.

They ship to both Canadian and U.S. addresses.