One of the main reasons for not giving up booze for January is that the alternatives are so unappealing. Even citrus-flavoured drinks tend to have a cloying note of sweetness, while smoothies are more like meal replacements than a refreshing accompaniment to one.
That’s gradually changing, though, and they may even end up being one of the major trends of 2017. After all, if “clean eating” can go viral, why not clean drinking? Although it could be argued that water is best placed to answer that particular call.
Actually, water is now a bit of a thing, and I don’t mean those fancy mineral waters. It features in some of the cocktails at Selfridges’ new bar the Fount, devised by mixologist Ryan Chetiyawardana. You can even buy smoked water from Halen Môn (£4), which makes an interesting addition to a virgin mary.
Products infused with gin-like botanicals are a more promising line of investigation. This is an approach pioneered by Seedlip, whose stylishly bottled Spice 94 includes allspice (and, I suspect, cloves), cardamom, lemon and grapefruit. At £27.95 for a 70cl bottle from the Whisky Exchange and £28.95 from Amazon, it’s pricey, true, but it is a more than a decent G&T substitute. A cheaper option is T&E No 1 (£3.95 for 330ml, Harvey Nichols), which contains more than 20 botanicals and is apparently filtered through silver birch charcoal. As you do. (It’s a sign of the times that it’s made by an offshoot of Britvic, manufacturer of Fruit Shoots.)
Some of the new breed of tonics that many people are pairing with fancy gins are also worth drinking on their own, albeit with plenty of ice and a dash of bitters to counteract their underlying sweetness. I’m quite partial to Fever-Tree’s Mediterranean Tonic (about £1.69 for 500ml, widely available) with a slice of lemon and a sprig of rosemary.
I’m also grabbed by the piney notes in Yorkshire Forager’s Wild (£9.99 for 250ml, Lakeland), a Douglas Fir cocktail syrup that’s a more than passable substitute for Islay whisky. It’s refreshing diluted with sparkling water, and even better topped up with hot water as a toddy. Lakeland also carries Atkins & Potts’ not-too-sweet Rosehip Syrup (£3.99 for 200g) that could almost kid you into thinking it’s a glass of rosé.
There is, in fact, an entire website dedicated to non-alcoholic drinks, alcoholfree.co.uk, as I discovered from Teetotal Tipples (£9.99), an engaging new book by drinks writer Helen McGinn, who tweets as @knackeredmutha. Her clever mocktails should get you through a dry January without too much pain. I wish you luck.
