Champagne and oysters. Ice-cold Sapporo and ramen. A dry martini and a juicy steak. You know what doesn’t belong on that list? Diet Coke and lobster. Sprite and uni. Sweet tea and foie gras.
If you’re an adult who doesn’t drink alcohol, pickings are slim for thoughtful, well-crafted drinks. The restaurant industry often forgets you, or throws a dusty Buckler on the beer list and calls it a day. But take heart, teetotalers: The tide is changing. With more people opting to live that sober life, the nonalcoholic-beverage industry is growing, which means now is a great time to drink dry — if you know where to look.
Beer
Beer is the easiest beverage to sobrietizeTM. For Nashville’s best selection, stop by Craft Brewed and try any can of their dozen-plus N.A. beers before picking a pack to take home.
With beer, the stronger the flavor, the bigger the real-beer vibes, which means opting for IPAs. My favorites are Brooklyn Brewery’s Special Effects IPA and WellBeing Brewing Company’slightly tropical Liquid Rain IPA. You should also check out Athletic Brewing Company, which makes one of the few N.A. Mexican beers. To scratch the sour-beer itch, try Non 5 Lemon Marmalade & Hibiscus, which looks like a faux sparkling wine but tastes like a citrusy sour, or tap into local Walker Brothers kombucha. When it comes to big retailers, skip the O’Doul’s and opt for Heineken 0.0, which is low-key pretty close to the original.
Wine
Ugly-truth time: It’s tough to make nonalcoholic wine that doesn’t taste like juice. Fermentation gives wine its mouthfeel and complexity, and when you cut the alcohol, sometimes you cut those too. To counteract that, many makers carbonate, which is great for an N.A. mimosa but not for a Malbec. Until science bridges that gap, sparkling, fermented and dealcoholized wine are your best bet.
My first brush with good N.A. wine was Sean Brock’s GELINAZ! Dinner. It introduced me to Jörg Geiger, a chef who makes N.A. wine from his family’s apple and pear orchards in Schlat, Germany. His PriSecco has a depth and herbal punch that puts ARIEL to shame. For an after-dinner drink, try the warming Cuvée Nr. 7 made with plums, spicy bronze fennel and chocolate mint. Having seafood? Grab the acerbic Aecht Bitter, made from pear juice, gooseberry and bitter herbs.
In the white-wine department, try Du Minot’s Le Clos, a dealcoholized apple-and-honey cider that offers crisp minerality without cloying sweetness. For pink stuff, try my dry-girl summer go-to: Wolffer Estate Petite Rosé Verjus. Made with Pinot Meunier red-wine grapes, it’s lightly fizzy and just tart enough to stand up to burgers and brats. Its bottle is also so ’grammable you’ll feel like a Goop model.
When it comes to red wine, everything in liquor stores is sad and waterlogged. Instead, order Jukes 6 cordial, made from wintry fruits (plums, black currants) and tart apple cider vinegar. Jukes can be diluted to your preference, so it can pinch-hit for sangria when topped with soda or even Port when sipped straight. (Jukes 8, their rosé riff with melon, pomegranate and rhubarb, is also tasty.) Another go-to is Proteau Ludlow Red, which is actually a botanical aperitif. With notes of blackberry and black pepper, Red’s got savory undertones and a rich mouthfeel, and it operates like an earthy red despite tasting nothing like one.
That last bit sounds ridiculous, I know. But many good sober substitutes taste nothing like the drink they’re replacing, and weirdly, that works. In my experience, N.A. drinks either need to be a dead ringer for their boozy counterport or they need to go so far in the other direction you forget what you’re missing. So keep your mind and your mouth open.
Liquor
Most N.A. liquors are atrocious. One reason liquor is delicious is that its high alcohol content causes it to evaporate quickly when sipped, which fast-tracks flavor to your palate. When you ax the alcohol, you pull that punch, creating a high hurdle for N.A. drinks to clear. What’s worse: Many N.A. liquor manufacturers also remove sugar and calories, which leads me to ask, have we not sacrificed enough? To quote Uncle Jesse, HAVE MERCY. If you’re going to take my tequila, leave me my sugar! Which is why I say skip Bax Botanics and Seedlip. People go apeshit for both, but personally, I find them bland and think they taste nothing like booze. Ritual does an OK job adding burn to their tequila alternative, but it’s still not enough for a decent mock-arita.
For my money, Three Spirits is the best of the bunch. Their Livener (guava, ginger, ginseng) is billed as an “invigorating elixir” and actually is because it’s made with guayusa, or caffeinated holly tree leaves. Their Nightcap is a tasty way to wind down with lemon balm and adaptogenic ashwagandha, which sounds like influencer nonsense but is actually a root that’s been scientifically proven to reduce stress. Another top mark for relaxation is Sacré. Made from coffee and maple syrup aged in bourbon barrels, it’s surprisingly unsweet, so it pairs well with desserts.
Finally, there’s the best in show: Sanbitter. Made by San Pellegrino, Sanbitter is a bright-red Italian soda that’s basically a cane-sugar-sweetened nonalcoholic Aperol. It is hands-down my No. 1 sober-summer find, whether sipped from its tiny 3.5-ounce bottle or served over ice with soda. San Pellegrino also makes other sodas such as Aranciata Rossa (blood orange), Limonata (lemon) and Crodino, an herbal aperitif that acts like white vermouth when topped with a little fizz. It goes to show, the Italians will never steer you wrong when aperitifs are on the line.
Ordering Out
A few places in Nashville have stellar nonalcoholic rosters — Cafe Roze/Roze Pony, The Fox Bar & Cocktail Club, The Continental — and many bars have at least one craft N.A. beer. Still, purposefully crafted nonalcoholic drinks are a weak spot in Nashville, and one I hope gets filled soon.
In the meantime, a few tips: First, house-made virgin bloody marys are excellent, especially if you replace the vodka with an extra shot of olive juice. Secondly, fresh house-made margarita mixes can be virginized with a splash of soda or ginger juice in place of tequila. Finally, if you’re ordering off-menu mocktails, pick a cocktail you like the look of and ask for those flavors. I’ve had success with that at Henley and The Optimist, but it works anywhere bartenders know their stuff. You know they’re packing sweet-pea syrup and cola cordial and all kinds of weird mixological stuff back there. Why not give them a new way to use it?
