Spirited Away — The Brands, Bartenders, and Bottle Shops Paving the Way for Non

Apr 01, 2023

In 2013, Ben Branson traveled into London for a nice dinner. Because he was driving, he decided to order a mocktail.

"They came back with this drink. It was fucking pink, sickly, and sweet, and I just felt like a child, you know? It was just fruity juice syrups," he says. "I just thought, ‘It's 2013, like, you can get great vegetarian food, you can get great vegan options. If you’re allergic to nuts, there are options. Yet if you’re not drinking alcohol for whatever reason, why are the options so dreadful?’ The dots started to join slowly over a period of a few months."

What began as an innocuous exchange sent Branson on an unexpected journey. "It didn't start with seeing an opportunity in this space and saying, ‘Oh my god, why doesn't the world have good non-alcoholic drinks? It was more born out of being a curious farming boy."

Branson never planned on creating non-alcoholic spirits for a living. He notably dislikes cities, lets his children design his tattoos, and carries around a 17th-century copy of "The Art of Distillation" by John French. The self-proclaimed farming boy had been living a quiet life in the English countryside, balancing running a design agency with growing herbs and vegetables. At first, his quest to build a different kind of nonalcoholic drink posed some challenges. "I’d never really heard about botanicals. I grew up learning about potatoes and barley," says Branson. "I didn't know about caraway seeds or bladderwrack seaweed. So, down the rabbit hole of the internet I went."

The botanical research led him to herbal medicine traditions dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries, a journey that many modern amari producers have gone on when devising their recipes. Everything changed once he got his hands on that copy of the "The Art of Distillation," which dates to 1664 and which he requests be handled with white gloves. The book looks and smells exactly as you’d expect—funky, musty, and weathered.

"It's basically a recipe book, but for herbal remedies using distillation as the method of extraction, and they were making alcoholic medicine and non-alcoholic medicine," Branson explains. "There are pictures in there of little stills and lots of different kinds of equipment. I just thought, ‘I’m going to have a go at this.’"

Branson began by tapping into the network that was closest to him—his parents. Together with his mother (who works in farming) and his father (who's also a designer), he began sketching out a plan to create a product while he was still experimenting with distillations and absorbing his herbal medicine research. "I bought this copper still and started playing around with herbs from my garden and found I could make a liquid that smelled and tasted like the plant," says Branson. "To me, that was really magical, you know, to take something from the garden and transform it into a liquid. I thought that was really fucking cool and I wanted to do it again, and I wanted to keep doing it, and I wanted to try other ingredients. This had nothing to do with drinks."

In 2015, Branson officially launched Seedlip with the introduction of Garden 108. Designed as a sophisticated and flavorful alternative to traditional alcoholic spirits, and inspired by the 108-day cycle it takes for peas to be grown and harvested, the inaugural recipe was driven by a fresh, herbal blend of peas, thyme, hay, rosemary, and spearmint. The small business produced its first thousand bottles to get it through the first six months. It sold out within three weeks.

Today, Seedlip is sold in over 40 countries and remains the best-selling product in the category. In 2016, the brand introduced Spice 94, known for its bold, warming, and spicy flavor profile that comes from a blend of Jamaican allspice, cardamom, and lemon. Just one year after, Seedlip released Grove 42, its bright, citrusy, and zesty flavor profile coming from a blend of three types of oranges, lemons, and ginger.

In just a few years’ time, through trials and experimentation, Branson successfully equipped bartenders, drinkers, and himself with the tools to create sophisticated non-alcoholic cocktails. Soon, others followed on the path he had forged.

"Seedlip was the pioneer," says Matt Chavez, bar manager of Manhattan's Ci Siamo, a high-end Italian restaurant. "When I was working at the NoMad [Hotel], we used it almost immediately once learning how to use it correctly. Fast forward three years and many samples later, and the market has changed so drastically in such an exciting way."

For most cocktails, the goal is balance. Without the signature burn and body of a traditional alcoholic spirit, non-alcoholic alternatives like Seedlip require creativity to use—making booze-free cocktails is rarely as simple as swapping out gin for Seedlip Garden 108 one-to-one. For bartenders like Chavez, the chance to explore and experiment is a welcome opportunity.

Seedlip relies heavily on botanicals, giving producers the opportunity to start with their nose and build around the unique aromas offered by ingredients like lemongrass and allspice berries. Those initial learnings with Seedlip inspired Chavez to experiment with other non-alcoholic spirits. Once he was given the opportunity to build the bar menu at Ci Siamo, he knew that there’d be a thoughtful, inclusionary space for non-alcoholic cocktails. His first out of the gate was the Amedeo.

"It's not a one-to-one Martini, but I wanted something in that style," explains Chavez. "It's stirred, it has texture, it has floral notes and juniper flavors. It's just a light, bright, floral, hefty-bodied, stirred, sipping non-alcoholic cocktail. I serve it up like a Martini, and it can be enjoyed like a Martini."

Like most cocktails, the Amedeo is more than the sum of its parts. Chavez begins with Amass Riverine as the floral spirit, which plays like a gin without trying to mimic one, and Lyre's non-alcoholic dry vermouth, which offers raspy notes of chamomile. A touch of pineapple gum syrup is used for texture and fruitiness, giving the drink a richness that is often lost in non-alcoholic cocktails. Tied together with verjus—the juice of unripened wine grapes—for acidity, the drink is an artful balancing act.

"It just tastes so pretty," says Chavez when describing Amass Riverine. "It has notes of juniper, but it takes its way into a whole other direction [than gin]. It has way more high tones and a really lovely white blossom floral quality to it. It's just something that I hadn't tasted before. I was expecting to taste an imitation gin and got something completely different and new, intense, and exciting."

Bartenders have served as a valuable source of ambassadorship and feedback for new producers in the non-alcoholic space. These spirits, which Chavez describes as growing and changing at a speedy clip, are being championed by more and more of the city's bar programs. And now, at-home drinkers are catching on, too.

Boisson feels like a cross between a natural wine retailer and the kind of boutique that hawks pricey candles and greeting cards. Its shelves are neatly organized with bottles bearing bright, vibrant labels. While perusing, you’ll find wine, beer, ready-to-drink cocktails, bitters, mixers, and seemingly any spirit imaginable. What you won't find is alcohol.

After launching as a neighborhood non-alcoholic retailer during the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, the young brand quickly expanded to five locations scattered across Brooklyn and Manhattan, and recently launched three new stores in Los Angeles. Rather than try to invent a new kind of shopping experience, co-founders Nick Bodkins and Barrie Arnold set out to evoke the familiar: a bottle shop.

"I live in Cobble Hill and get to go down the street to Scotto's, my local wine and liquor store," explains Bodkins, Boisson's CEO. "Jim and Mike know about my taste preferences, they seek to bring in exclusives, and offer a local wine-buying experience."

On the surface, Boisson feels comparable to a bottle shop, but when you dig deeper it acts more like a specialty foods store—the kind that stocks a broader range of products compared to a grocery or general retailer. Non-alcoholic alternatives aren't necessarily new, but the variety of options is. While some of those brands are finding their way onto the shelves of grocery stores and even major e-commerce platforms, there are few retailers to rival Boisson, which offers a wide-ranging selection all in one place.

When Bodkins and his wife were going through the process of in vitro fertilization, he supported their journey by joining her in abstaining from drinking alcohol. Yet the couple still had an interest in enjoying an early-evening cocktail or a glass of wine with dinner, and thus began exploring the world of non-alcoholic wine and spirits.

"What I found while looking for all of these NA options, is I’d have to go to three different websites to get three different ingredients to make a cocktail," says Bodkins. "It's not super environmentally conscious. I’ve got three different boxes, I have three different accounts, and I have to meet three different shipping minimums. There's just a friction-filled experience. That was the ‘aha moment’ for me."

For some of the producers that Boisson stocks on its shelves, the goal is to begin with products and drinking occasions that many customers are already familiar with, and to offer alcohol-free versions of those experiences.

"Aperitivo is an important part of the day in European culture and it's become a special part of my personal routine," explains Melanie Masarin, founder of Ghia. "The first drink of the evening really sets the tone for the rest of the night, and we designed Ghia for this moment of transition. It's an invitation to take time for yourself, listen to some music, watch the sunset, and have a conversation with your loved ones."

Ghia has tapped into a cultural context, recreating the refreshingly bitter flavor profiles of many aperitivi with ingredients like riesling white grape juice concentrate, yuzu, and rosemary extract. As someone who says she loves hosting dinner parties and get-togethers, Masarin fell into the space in a very different way than Ben Branson—she saw the opportunity from the start.

"I was so convinced that a non-alcoholic aperitif like Ghia needed to exist and I knew I needed to bring it to life," says Masarin. "I absolutely love bitters and Italian amaros, and I wanted to make a bitter drink that has the complexity of an alcoholic drink without trying to mimic a specific spirit or buzz people in some way."

There is a market for direct non-alcoholic spirit equivalents. Ritual Zero Proof, a Chicago-based non-alcoholic spirits producer, is one such company making explicit alternatives to whiskey, rum, gin, and tequila that are all, you guessed it, zero proof. The strategy can be a good way to speak to consumers, though also poses technical challenges, finding substitutes to evoke alcohol's body and mouthfeel, and its burning finish, in an alcohol-free environment.

"If you can sell someone whiskey, you can sell them the alternative," says Marcus Sakey, co-founder and chief brand officer at Ritual Zero Proof. "Just put it on your list, and put a seal that any drink on this cocktail list can be made non-alcoholic. As simple as that."

Other producers approach the category with a different philosophy. Like Branson, they look to create no-ABV spirits without clear definition, introducing consumers to new flavor profiles without the burden of imitation. "When I first started hearing people [describe Seedlip as non-alcoholic gin], I would jump down their throat and go, ‘Oh my god, it is definitely not, but I’ve relaxed on it a bit," says Branson. "I’ve got so much love and respect for the alcohol industry. Looking at the crazy world of amari or gin, there's so much serious skill, passion, dedication, and love for those blends and their ingredients. I wanted to try and bring some of that same uniqueness with so many different plants to choose from. It was more fun to come up with a blend of unique ingredients than just take someone else's recipe and copy it and try and make it non-alcoholic. That just wasn't exciting to me."

This approach also gives bartenders like Chavez the freedom to see these products as completely unique entities. Behind the bar at Ci Siamo, non-alcoholic spirits live among the alcoholic spirits, not as alternatives but as equal players.

"The panoply of flavors is just so much different from what we started with," explains Chavez. "Many of these spirits lend a certain amount of acid that you can't get without using citrus, lending a brightness that you might be searching for. So as opposed to being a plug-in one-to-one, I think they’re starting to be their own ingredients that didn't exist before, and we can reach into our backbars for. It's exciting. Any new product is exciting, but especially a flavor that you’ve never tried before."

From Seedlip's Branson to the co-founders of Boisson, many of the leaders in the non-alcoholic category do still drink alcohol. Most of their customers do as well. Some compare these products to meat alternatives—while a vegan might avoid foods designed to resemble the taste and texture of animal flesh, an omnivore might choose to replace their beef burger with something plant-based from time to time.

"Less than 5% of our customers are teetotalers," says Bodkins when asked about the habits of Boisson's clientele. "Having a glass of wine and then supplementing it with an NA option doesn't mean a person drinks fewer drinks in a night—rather, they drink less alcohol in a night. It opens options up quite a bit."

Over the last decade, sobriety and substance abuse have been hot topics across the hospitality industry, with well-renowned chefs and bartenders speaking openly about their struggles. These influential figures have an opportunity to use their platform to push the category further along into both mainstream and niche enclaves.

"We’re aware of the long-term effect that this industry has on both physical and mental health," says Chavez. "With that, you’re finding that people are way more aware of their alcohol intake. But they know what good spirits taste like, they know what good cocktails taste like, and they don't want to give that up. It's such a familiar, delicious thing that we’ve all come to love and have an appetite for. Now we have these really impressive non-alcoholic aperitivo and amaro-style products that play super well if you’re trying to imitate a Spritz, a Negroni, or whatever it may be."

Still, while the category is moving quickly, consumer habits take time to adapt. Many drinkers who are exploring the space are still getting acclimated to spending the same amount, or even more, for non-alcoholic drinks as they would on alcoholic spirits. The fact of the matter is that these drinks don't cost any less to produce.

"Price is going to be a challenge and an opportunity for education in this sector," says Branson. "People are still getting their head around the idea of, ‘Hold up a minute, oh, yeah, actually what am I paying for when I buy an alcoholic cocktail or a non-alcoholic cocktail from a bartender at a bar? What is the value there?’ And the value is that you’re getting a great drink with great service, and ideally having a great time. That's the value. So, what do you want to spend on that? Instead of nitpicking and saying, ‘This doesn't have alcohol in it, therefore this is not as good.’ That's going to take some time."

The alcohol industry has over 6,000 years on the non-alcoholic sector. With the international market still wide open, opportunity remains abundant as the category just begins to push past the starting line. "I find it incredible that the U.S. market is expanding so quickly," says Branson. "I think there's a really exciting opportunity for retail and it wouldn't surprise me if there are over 100 of these shops across the U.S. in the next two to three years."