Last year, I tasted more than 20 nonalcoholic (NA) spirits, sampled over 30 different NA beers, and spent weeks profiling the people creating these spirit-free libations. A year later, I’ve arrived at two conclusions: One, many of these drinks are delicious on their own; and two, they’re even better when combined with actual alcohol.
The latter conclusion sprung from necessity. This past June, while vacationing in Ojai—a town two hours north of Los Angeles that’s best at citrus, restaurants, and reminding tourists that the sun always gets its way—I became very, very hot. In search of refreshment (and a breath of fresh air conditioning), I sprinted into a hotel lobby and panic-ordered iced water, light beer, and Ghia’s canned Le Spritz Lime & Salt.
I slammed the water, then poured the other two drinks in equal amounts atop the remaining ice—creating something that’s part shandy, part spaghett, and fully delicious. In short, it ruled—and I spent the rest of the day consuming its bitter, refreshing #notes.
Photo by Julia Gartland
Sometime after my third trip to the lobby bar, I thought: Why isn’t this more of a thing? A question that often leads to the following series of events: I think I’m onto something new, it prompts me to spend fifteen minutes visualizing the fleet of yachts I’d glean from scaling its discovery, then, moments before contacting the bigwigs at the money factories, I’ll search the idea online and find that hundreds—if not thousands—of people already had the same thought.
Which is how I found this four-year-old Reddit post, asking: Can you put pure alcohol in an NA drink to make it a consumable (and tasty) alcoholic drink? To which my now enemy answered: “You have discovered mixers. That is how cocktails are made.” Perhaps this isn’t the sort of yacht-creating idea I thought it was. But I refuse to believe that it’s entirely worthless, right?
Bartenders don’t think so. For Max Pogacar, the beverage director of Burlington, Vermont’s Frankie’s, NA products—especially those from Wolfpeach—appear in some of his most prized cocktails. “I did a competition with their oxymel last year and combined it with passion fruit and gin to create a Saturn riff.” Max’s reasoning for including the NA tonic in his cocktail (which came in second place, by the way) was simple: “Its apple cider vinegar and honey just have such a powerful flavor. I really like it in small amounts in cocktails.”
The only occasional drawback is price. For instance, the 500ml bottle of Ghia’s original aperitif concentrate costs $38, while a larger, 750ml bottle of Campari—a comparable alcohol-having aperitif—rings in at $29. “Because of the ingredients, my NA negroni actually costs more than the alcoholic version,” Max said, “which kind of kills me, if I’m being honest.”
But there are workarounds. According to Matt Canning, the general manager of Burlington’s famed Hotel Vermont, it’s a matter of product selection. “Ghia can be expensive, so we actually don’t use the [aperitif], but we do serve the cans in some settings.” Which checks out: a four-pack of Lime & Salt Ghia cans—the liquid that prompted this rabbit hole—retails for $17, making it cheaper per ounce than many of its alcoholic counterparts.
Of course, there’s also value in versatility. Unlike traditional spirits, I can enjoy NA products on their own during any time of day, or I can turn them into low-ABV beer cocktails that’ll carry me through an entire afternoon of golf, or I can mix them with passion fruit and gin to create an award-worthy, full-strength cocktail.
So, yes, Reddit’s right—kind of. NA products are just mixers, but to me they’re more. Because here’s the thing: they taste really, really good, and that’s all that matters.
What’s your favorite way to drink NA spirits? Let us know in the comments below!
