The 14 Best Nonalcoholic Spirits of 2024

You can start shopping online or in person for alcohol-free spirits and mixers or nonalcoholic beers and wines to shake up your happy hour routine. Because the umbrella of nonalcoholic beverages includes a wide variety of products, it’s hard to definitively say whether nonalcoholic beverages are universally healthier than alcoholic ones. Three Spirit Social Elixir ($40 for a 500 mL bottle at the time of publication) reminded us of an amaro or fortified wine with notes of mushroom, forest floor, red wine, plum, sage, and yerba mate. Though we’re impressed by Ghia’s Original Aperitif, and we also liked the company’s Berry Aperitif and Sumac & Chili spritz, we’re less enamored with the other canned spritzes in the line.

• Before getting to suggestions, just a reminder that nonalcoholic beer does contain some alcohol, though usually less than 0.5 percent ABV.
• The drink contains some rose petal extract, which comes through much stronger in the nose than on the tongue.
• Personally, I prefer an extra fizzy beverage, so I add in a little more seltzer to get a bubblier version.
• With lychee and grapefruit juices, rooibos tea, and Champagne vinegar among its ingredients, Très Rosé is an easy-to-drink but still complex aperitif.
• No. 2 is a well-balanced sweet and salty bottled cocktail with a nice spicy kick.
• Though we’re impressed by Ghia’s Original Aperitif, and we also liked the company’s Berry Aperitif and Sumac & Chili spritz, we’re less enamored with the other canned spritzes in the line.
• Some producers also create ciders using alternative fruits, such as pears, to offer a unique twist on the traditional apple-based beverage.

The Best Nonalcoholic Spirits

Using a proprietary brewing method, all Athletic Brewing beers are fully fermented to less than 0.5% ABV rather than being dealcoholized later. No. 2 is a well-balanced sweet and salty bottled cocktail with a nice spicy kick. An aromatic, bright spirit, Calme offers a yuzu flavor that kept us sipping even as its slightly soapy florals lingered. CBD can give you the same sense of relaxation we get from alcohol without any chance of a hangover. „CBD is not an alcohol replacement I would recommend,” says Cox. She suggests adaptogens https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/boredom-drinking-and-how-to-stop-it/ instead, which include compounds like ashwagandha, which can have the same relaxing effect.

Monday Zero Alcohol Gin

But it sets itself apart from its competitors with its unrelenting bitterness, which surpasses the bitterness of the amari it’s clearly modeled after. The grapefruit and gentian smack you over the head with tannic flavors, making it far too strong to be consumed neat or on the rocks. Mixing it with tonic water or soda will tame the bitterness slightly, but no matter what we blended this drink with, it still made us pucker. The risk in drinking a beer under .5% is low, but no guarantees.

Cut Above Zero Proof Mezcal

Stock your booze-free bar cart with premium mixers, shrubs, and other high-quality ingredients. Spiritless’ Kentucky 74 offers bourbon lovers who want to cut back or cut out alcohol a viable, delicious solution. Offering a mix of caramel, vanilla, and oak notes, Kentucky 74 can be used in any bourbon-based cocktail. It won Best Non-Alcoholic Spirit and an additional gold metal at the L.A. Champignon may be the French word for „mushroom,” but if you’re worried that Champignon Dreams is going to taste like fungus, rest easy. It does contain reishi mushroom powder for its purported health benefits, but we couldn’t taste the shrooms at all.

Pentire Adrift & Tonic Canned

Tasters agreed that this would alternatives to alcohol be a great drink to sip on while sick, or a sweet complement to a huge plate of carne asada fries. Curious Elixirs offers eight booze-free cocktails with daring, unusual flavor combinations. We think Curious Elixir No. 2 is the winner, with its approachable but complex, unique but familiar blend of pineapple, jalapeño, and lime. Curious likens the drink to a cross between a dark and stormy and a spicy pineapple margarita, and the beverage’s salt content provides a savory edge that we found delectable. We’d play on that by serving this tepache-like drink in a salt-rimmed glass to further tease out the margarita comparison. Wilfred’s bittersweet nonalcoholic aperitif visually excites, its bright red liquid held in a tall, slim, bottle with an art deco–style label.

How to choose a zero-proof beverage

The moderation movement is still evolving, as the “low” half of the “no and low” category continues to grow. It seems more and more of us are giving the “less but better” thing a go, and while that may mean forgoing lunchtime pints in favour of an evening Negroni for some, for others it’s about entirely new alternatives. Animal studies, self-reports, and research in people suggest that CBD, or cannabidiol, can help with anxiety, insomnia, and chronic pain without the “high” from THC. If you’re looking for something to sip on to unwind after a long day, a CBD-infused beverage is perfect—just make sure it’s coming from a reputable source that posts third-party lab results on their site.

General Health

• Branson said he has noticed a real attitudinal shift in the years since he first introduced his product, noting that more people are accepting of the idea of nonalcoholic drinks than ever before.
• While great on its own, Mingle suggests pairing it with rum, vodka, or gin if you want to spike it yourself.
• All of Betty Buzz’s mixers are Gluten-free, kosher, vegan-friendly, and Non-GMO.
• Golden Hour (shown here) is made with maca and L-theanine for relaxation and is great for making mocktail mules and a non-alcoholic spritz.
• It’s also sustainably packaged and arrives in a beautiful bottle that’s worthy of any beverage display shelf.

Tenneyson Black Ginger ($40 for a 750mL bottle at the time of publication) was a jolting, difficult drink with a nice fresh ginger flavor but a disappointing grape juice finish, and it failed to hold up to mixing. Pentire Seaward tastes like bitter grapefruit pith, with some light salinity and a hint of juniper. It proved too subtle, and its delicate flavor got lost when we mixed it with tonic and seltzer. Casamara Club Fora and Casamara Club Isla ($55 for a 12-pack of 355 mL cans at the time of publication) were only faintly flavored, offering mere whispers of strawberry and ginger, respectively, mixed into cans of seltzer. The spice level and scotch bonnet flavor kept us coming back for more while also slowing down our sipping, something we look for in NA bevs to match the gradual savoring of alcoholic drinks. But we wished the ginger flavor were more fresh, and we found the drink slightly weighed down by a sort of cough-drop-like ginger turmeric flavor.

• They each have their own blend of different adaptogens and nootropics like reishi or tryptophan so you can perfectly curate your vibe — which is why we highly suggest one of their variety packs.
• Gone are the days when the sober and the sober-curious had to sidle up to the bartender and whisper their Roy Rogers order in hopes of passing it off as a rum and Coke.
• We’ve updated our favorites, adding new picks such as Aplós Calme and Figlia Fiore Frizzante.
• I loved their strawberry guava flavor, a juicy, fruity, summery treat that’s perfect for the beach, but you can also pick up a variety pack that includes other flavors like peach mango and blackberry lemon.
• The world of nonalcoholic drinks has come so far we can no longer lump the wine proxies and the canned mocktails together in one short, simple list.

Nonalcoholic cider

The company says it uses a spinning cone to filter the alcohol out of the wine — though we suspect this filtration system also deprives the wine of flavor. After all, Fre products include grape concentrate and other flavoring in addition to the dealcoholized wine. Without bubbles to smooth things over, we could detect more of the grape juice character in the non-sparkling wines. They also tended to have a vinegar-like acidity that read less like wine and more like kombucha.