Review: Goodvines Sparkling Riesling
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White wines are for summer, right? Wrong! Rieslings are the ideal year round white wine, and they are also a top style in the non-alcoholic white wine category. Rieslings are a usually a heavier bodied white and can be a great accompaniment to appetizers, dry roasted veggies and meats or cheesy dishes during cooler months, or be perfectly refreshing in the summer months, pairing easily with summer dishes.
If you’re new to rieslings, don’t get scared away by your past experiences with overly sweet cheap rieslings. Well-made aromatic riesling (even a non-alcoholic version) is a real treat with its vibrant acidity and delicate balance of mineral and citrus.
Riesling dealcoholizes really really well because of its sugar and acidity levels, and one of the first excellent non-alcoholic whites to grace the world stage was the Leitz Eins Zwei Riesling which is still one of my absolute favourites.
Goodvines Sparkling Riesling is a Gold Medal Winner in 2024 at the World Alcohol-free Awards. It’s one of the few non-alcoholic sparkling rieslings available in the world. And yes, before you say it doesn’t look like a sparkling wine, the bottle is deceiving. Keep reading to find out why.
Goodvines is made in Germany and I really love their ethos around winemaking. They use aroma recovery in their production which is complex enough, but they also say their wines are free from artificial additives, which is very hard to do. I had my doubts but the taste of this specific wine speaks for itself.
Aroma
Lemon curd and fresh orchard fruit on the nose. As always, anything chemical turns me off and this wine had not even a whiff of anything strange. Just beautiful!
Taste
On the palate, there are crisp notes of lemon, golden delicious apples and yellow pear with a fresh mineral finish. I detected a hint of salinity which balances out the acidity nicely. And it could have been my imagination, but the hallmark petrol notes I love in riesling were just peeking out after the wine warmed up a bit.
Mouthfeel & Experience
Medium-minus body with a lively and fresh character. This is one of those non-alcoholic wines where you don’t miss the alcohol. It’s enough on it’s own!
What To Pair With It
Shell fish, oysters and other seafood or fish would be divine with this smooth wine, although I wished it had a little bit more salinity. Regardless, this is a great food wine and even though it’s gently sparkling, it doesn’t have a lot of needless carbonation so it works with food.
Overall
I actually really loved this wine. It’s got a nice acidic backbone without being too overly sweet and paired really well with the salmon I was eating for lunch. Not a great match with the green vegetables on the plate, but it was crisp enough for the oily salmon and complemented it really nicely.
Score: 95 points
Where to Buy Goodvines Sparkling Riesling
Unbelievably, this wine is available on Amazon in the U.S. ($20). The bottle looks different than the Canadian and European version but it’s the same wine, just an older vintage.
You can also buy it on Proof No More ($17) - I don’t have a discount code, but if you sign up for their newsletter you can get 10% off your purchase, so you can load other things into your cart too to maximize the discount.
For Canada: Available at Sobr Market.
