Delicious Non-Boozy Beer, Wine, and Spirits for Dry January
Pro-tip for surviving Dry January: Find alternatives you can get excited about.
Rob Lawson
If you've resolved to abstain from alcohol—for the month, the year, or indefinitely—you may find yourself more tempted than usual to reach for a drink. Pro-tip: Find alternatives you can get excited about. Here are some brilliantly conceived beverages you’ll be delighted to drink—even when you’re not being a sober soldier.
Rob LawsonFlavors of warm spices, oak and grapefruit peel. Great on the rocks, with a spritz, or in a more elaborate mocktail.
To create the world’s first distilled, non-alcoholic "spirit," Seedlip founder Ben Branson designed a (carefully guarded) method for extracting lush botanical notes from vegetal ingredients like peas, spearmint, cardamom, and cloves. He batches the elements from each of his creations separately, in copper and steel, to find their fullest expression. He then combines the distillates in a manner not so different from blending whiskey. The result is drink that’s sugar-, sweetener-, and calorie-free---yet uniquely flavorful and aromatic.
Navarro VineyardsLush strawberry with a subtle note of black tea. This ain’t no Concord grape juice.
When California winemakers Ted Bennet and Deborah Cahn found themselves starting a family, they were inspired to create a virgin alternative to their flagship pinot noirs and gewürztraminers. The challenge, as they saw it, was to create a juice that mimicked the experience of tasting a fresh grape. So Bennett and Cahn eschewed conventional juice-making techniques, opting instead for an approach modeled after their successes in the wine room. They make their juice with the same grapes that they use in their award winning wines. And, just as in wine making, they test the sugars in their fruits and pick them at their peak. After crushing the grapes, they use cold filtration to prevent yeast from fermenting the juice and bottle it in the same handsome vessels as their wines. Requiring a corkscrew to open your grape juice brings a familiar touch of theater to the experience.
ErdingerSweet wheat aroma with hoppy bitterness, and residual notes of German polka.
In Bavaria, the average adult consumes 46 gallons of beer a year. So yeah, leave it to Bavarian brewing heavyweight Erdinger to develop some delicious virgin suds. This stuff way beyond passable; water, wheat, barley malt, hops, yeast and German engineering combine for a remarkably drinkable brew. The light body is peppered with rich carbonation and capped with a thick, long-lasting head. If you were blind tasting it out of a one-liter glass boot, you’d have a difficult time guessing it’s non-alcoholic.
