Boozeless booze is big news right now.
Whether it’s a dry or damp January that’s seeped into February, buoyant Gen Z temperance or a vague sense that drinking six pints of G&T a night is melting your brain and liver into gloop, the thought of a grown-up drink that doesn’t get you drunk is increasingly appealing (at least occasionally). And because sipping tap water or sugary lemonade is deeply unchic, there’s a whole new wave of sober faux-spirits out there, promising all the delicious taste of booze with none of the leaving your bag in a black cab in Ealing and waking up covered in guilt and cold chips.
Seedlip is the pioneer in the brave new boozeless world, with three different varieties of nectar made from distilled botanicals: the citrus Grove 42, the aromatic Spice 94 and herbal Garden 108. So popular has it become that you can now get it onboard Virgin Atlantic flights, if getting trollied off the trolley doesn’t fly with you. Cocktails are the way forward with Seedlip: I don’t find tonic alone adequate disguise for the perfume of pure botanicals (or the astringent grass smell of the Garden 108) untempered by the sweet, bitter burn of alcohol.
Luckily, London is full of bars shaking and stirring Seedlip-spiked drinks, from the Savoy’s American Bar to Soho’s Swift and Kentish Town’s Ladies & Gentlemen.
New to the market is Three Spirit, a ‘social elixir’ made using different plants with supposedly feel-good properties, such as yerba mate and cacao, in order to mimic the happy-making effect of actual alcohol. It smells molasses sweet, like gingerbread syrup mixed with apple cider vinegar. Blended with soda, it’s a bit like artisan cola and actually rather delicious. Head to Tredwells in Covent Garden or Shoreditch’s The Devil’s Darling and Happiness Forgets for innovative, deboozed debauchery.
Gin is the hottest thing to be stripped of booze, as distilling botanicals such as juniper, grapefruit and cardamom and mixing them with water rather than ethanol theoretically retains the perfumed taste of the spirit. Debatable, but there’s lots to try out there, from Ceder’s South African alt-gin to Devon-based Sea Arch.
East London-based natural soft drink company Square Root Soda has just launched a non-alcoholic G&T which, to be honest, tastes like lemonade with a dash of lime cordial, but comes in a pretty bottle, isn’t sickly sweet and has enough fizz and tang to quench a double Hendrick’s craving. Its collaboration with Partizan brewery on a sbagliato is also worth a shot. Beet sugar, balsamic vinegar, wormwood and grape must from urban winery Renegade are blended to make a decently bittersweet, appetite-whetting version of the Campari, vermouth and sparkling wine cocktail.
Even M&S is getting in on the act with its ‘gin-less wonder’, an alcohol-free sparkling botanical pre-mixed G&T, as is Gordon’s, in case your train tinny habit needs sobering up a little. That’s the spirit. Not.
