Lyre’s Classico Non-Alcoholic Sparkling

Just launched from Lyre’s, this is a properly grown-up addition to the no alcohol sparkling world.  It starts with burst of peach and delivers a delightful dry, bubbly swig, perfectly balanced and packed with flavours of peach and apple.  The finish is almost mineral and so good that when my wife found me tasting this at 9am, I gave her a kiss and she immediately said “you’ve been drinking”.  Which was true, up to a point.

I think the secret here is that Lyre’s have copied Belle&Co and taken the interesting step of making their drink from fermented grape juice using a selection of bacteria and yeast that produces only minimal alcohol.  This is the same approach that is taken in making a kombucha, and indeed, ginger beer.  The beauty of this is that it produces some of the flavours that we expect from a fermented wine but without then degrading those flavours by having to remove the alcohol.

The result is a drink with real depth.  The only drawback is the price – pay £9 for this or around £3 to £4 for some of the simpler products such as Asda’s Sparkling Sauvignons Blanc or Nozeco – especially if you’re going to mix the sparkling with something else.