Review: Les Marée Non-Alcoholic Blanc de Blanc Sparkling Wine

This past holiday season I was searching for a festive non-alcoholic sparkling wine for hosting that was priced-well but would be crowd-friendly and easy drinking for a non-alcoholic option.

Les Marées popped onto the radar when I saw it listed at The Zero Proof and was curiously excited to try something new.

I honestly had to dig a little bit to find out where this non-alcoholic sparkling wine comes from, who makes it and where to buy it. The brand website is basically a skeleton, which usually means corporate overlord. If you know me at all, you know I’m an internet sleuth and this was a challenge that my inner-detective had to solve.

I happened to notice a familiar email domain on their website and did a deep dive through my inbox and boom, mystery solved - Les Marées is from the same California team that produces Woody’s sparkling non-alcoholic wine. You know I’m not a fan at all of the Woody’s blanc, but I don’t mind their rosé. It made me apprehensive about this n/a option, but experience dictates that sometimes you can be surprised by a brand’s various releases.

The basics? Les Marées is made from 100% chardonnay grapes grown in a coastal region of the South of France - close to where our friends at Moderato are producing their delicious wines. I’m not sure if it’s dealcoholized there or brought here to the U.S. but the grapes and fermented wine begins in an organic French vineyard.

Aroma

On the nose there are notes of plum, brioche and apple. A light pleasant aroma in line with the usual n/a bubbles. No chemical whiff or sun-dried raisins, which is automatic bonus marks.

Mouthfeel & Experience

Usually I would write tasting notes first, but this non-alcoholic sparkling wine is very unusual. The texture is extremely creamy, with tiny soft bubbles that aren’t aggressively sharp and sort of melt in your mouth. Immediately my brain went to non-alcoholic German wheat beers. And as you’ll read below, there is a hint of yeastiness which makes this a really interesting experience. Soft creamy bubbles are hard to replicate with artificial carbonation. Those types of bubbles come from high-end aged wine so it was very unique to find them in a non-alcoholic wine.

Overall, with the mousse and the yeasty notes, I did feel more like I was drinking a soft silky beer than a wine, but no points docked for this because I kind of like how unique it is.

Taste

The only way to enable a sparkling wine to have yeasty or bready notes is through aging ‘sur la lie’ (aging on the lees). It was confusing, because there is no way this non-alcoholic wine was fermented, had the alcohol removed and then was re-fermented. To my knowledge, Bolle is the only n/a brand in the world that does this, because they’ve invented a yeast that produces very low amounts of alcohol in order to keep the wine under 0.5%.

I shouldn’t dwell on only one aspect because there are more prominent flavour notes of green apple and lemon curd with a nice bright acidity. There’s not a lot of complexity to this wine and it has a bit of a homogenous flavour, but that’s from the added invert sugar which essentially flattens any character. But it’s nice and fresh and crisp and quite refreshing.

Overall

I would consider this wine to be mid-range in the spectrum of production quality, taste and experience. It’s a little on the sweet side for me, but bright and zippy and also soft and creamy - a dichotomy in a bottle!

I tried it in a mimosa and it was nice, but you often need sharper carbonation when you’re mixing bubbly with orange juice. This would be great in mocktail recipes because of the sweetness and the soft, creamy texture.

One added thing to note is the sugar level isn’t too high, with 3g per 100ml or about 4.5g per 5oz glass which makes this ideal if you are watching your sugar intake.

Right now it’s $22 at The Zero Proof or part of this month’s quarterly wine club box.

My score: 92 points

How I rank non-alcoholic wines (based on IWSC standards):

95 to 100 - An excellent drink with a great personality. An example that stands out among its peers

90 to 94 - An accomplished drink with considerable personality, character and complexity. A classic example of its style or variety.

85 to 89 - A perfectly well-made drink which provides an enjoyable drinking experience.

80 to 84 - An acceptable but simple drink, lacking distinction.