Planning on adhering to The Manual’s Guide to a Dry January? If December’s indulgence is good for the soul, then a dry January is good for the body. You don’t have to lose the taste or experience of complex cocktails, though. Distilleries from the Northwest to the Southeast serve up classic substitutes to vodka, whiskey, gin, and other herbaceous offerings sans the booze.
To enjoy the heart of social gatherings without the hangover, here are several alcohol-free bases to create alternative cocktails.
Monday Zero Alcohol Gin
If it’s looking to class up the joint sans the boozed-out downfall, you can find what you’re looking for in Monday’s Zero Alcohol Gin. Smooth and herbaceous, Monday Gin clinks in with a complex, aromatic botanical blend of juniper, citrus, and spices that spike the taste buds, but not the brain cells.
Monday is not only selling spirits, but a new lifestyle — “a mindset toward self-care, staying sharp, and living life without compromise.” The Southern Californian distillery wants to provide quality taste without giving up your health or the next day. And it’s all available to try now.
Wilderton Earthen
Blowing in from a blustery Pacific Northwest, Wilderton’s non-alcoholic botanical spirits arrive to warm up white winter nights. Whether it’s skiing endless mountains to riding under cloudless summer skies, there’s no need to bring along a beating head. Heck, you can bring the redolent smell of the pine woods with you via Wilderton’s Earthen blend.
Opening this bottle inside will suffuse noses with spices and dripping green forests. Taste notes include white peppercorn, pine-smoked tea, and cardamom for a robust, warm blend of West and East.
This zest for a complex essence, botanic flavors, and an active lifestyle inspired fellow Oregonians Brad Whiting and Seth O’Malley to create the Wilderton line. Now you can savor a bottle or two as the sun sets and the flames start to rise in the fire pit, or simply during a weekday dinner with no next-day fuzziness to deal with. Get started below.
Seedlip Garden 108
Feeling fresh and you want to both stay that way and have your beverage reflect this energy? Seeplip Garden non-alcoholic drink provides a green herbal blend that combines the earthiness of peas with a blast of traditional garden herbs like rosemary, thyme, and spearmint.
Only four years old and Seedlip has been embraced by some of the world’s best bars, restaurants, hotels, and retailers. In turn, a process that began as a concoction put together in a rural British kitchen is now leading a global awakening to reconsider what we drink.
Seedlip began as founder Ben Branson found motivation in John French’s centuries-old recipes for distilling herbs to harness their healing power in concert with a growing technique to hand-sow seeds using baskets called ‘seedlips.’ The result of this embrace of farming heritage, nature, and design to fulfill demand for a sophisticated, non-alcoholic beverage? A trio of non-alcoholic bottles that have taken home two gold medals at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, a Penguin cocktail book, additional offices in Los Angeles and Sydney, and the global launch of Nolo — the no and low alcohol cocktail concept.
Kin Euphorics Dream Light
Looking to show your sensitive side? Searching for a cosmic way to impress a partner, be it business or romance? Kin Euphorics has got you covered with bottles born with light from the stars.
Co-founders Jen Batchelor and Bella Hadid each found their way to mixing magic, science, and global influence to shape industries. The two combined their desires for brain and body care to transform the world’s oldest social ritual into a thoughtful act of caring for our mind, body, and spirit of ourselves.
Take Kin’s Dream Light as an example. The purpose is to quiet the outside world while stepping into a healing night without alcohol interruption. Instead calming spices, Reishi mushroom, and melatonin will help drinkers embrace a natural Circadian rhythm to drift off to dreamland.
Alcohol knocks you off balance and your mind off-kilter, but clinking glasses is as old as human history. Kin’s founders found a way to embrace the ceremony without having to damage your body.
Arkay Alcohol-Free Vodka Alternative
Arkay’s alcohol replacement line promises to provide that same mouth kick and liquor burn that the real stuff gives without the boozy consequences. This non-liquor might appear like a transparent nonentity, but, like vodka, it’s got bite.
Its roots are still ambiguous despite an explanation that the taste and snarl that Arkay’s booze has got come from founder Reynald Grattagliano’s son and a 2011 discovery. Kevin Grattagliano was looking for an escape from hangovers, which led Reynald on an odyssey to eventually discover the mysterious W.A.R.M molecule.
No matter the main ingredients’ shadowy existence, Arkay serves up the pop of a Moscow Mule and the sweet White Russian kiss without the aftereffects.
