Strong stuff for a Dry January

If you spent your holiday season right, you’re reading this magazine with a hangover, fueled by seasonal excesses in eggnog, wine, whisky and other alcoholic indulgences. January is the month to clean out, to convince yourself you’re going to start running regularly this year, burn off some of the holiday fat and detox your thoroughly tox’d body. However, just because you’re having a dry January doesn’t mean it should be a dreary one — and there are some great drinks to fuel you through it.

So most of this month’s drinks will be mocktails; fortunately the non-alcoholic scene is not what it was a few years ago. Once it was just Heineken 0 and Peroni 0; now my fridge is stocked with Brew Dog alcohol-free IPAs — through 2024, I drank more of them than alcoholic beers, because they taste great but have way fewer calories. Another Great British NA option is Lucky Saint, which is not yet available in the US — but that should change this year. The wine options have gotten a lot stronger too. Noughty Sparkling Chardonnay, Leitz Eins Zwei Riesling and Wednesday’s Domaine Vignette could be mistaken for their boozy alternatives; Unified Ferments makes beautiful wine alternatives that are absolutely gorgeous, but unlike anything based on fermented grapes.

The problem with classic mocktails is they’re not often much like cocktails; they’re sweet, overpriced juices. Many of the competing mocktail lists out this month will have various drinks made using the formula of “infused syrup + lemon/lime juice + seltzer” but I don’t really consider them mocktails. For a mocktail to work, it should have some of the feel of the proper stuff, and a nice trick to get there is to use some of the improved non-alcoholic wines and beers and then non-alcoholically spike them. Make a Bellini out of the Noughty cava, or a beautiful white- wine spritzer with something from Unified Ferments.

You can even do some of the spiked beers I mentioned last summer — make a beer Bloody Mary (just drop the vodka) or a non-alcoholic version of the Spaghett’. That Italian drink is the beer-based version of an Aperol spritz; for the non-alcoholic alternative, take the same formula but use a great non-alcoholic aperitif instead. And there are many from which to choose.

This has been a fast-growing, and improving, segment of the non-alcoholic market, and the best aperitif versions don’t try to duplicate existing flavors — they do something special and new. Crossip’s Dandy Smoke has a smoky, pineapple-tinged dark fruit flavor; 3⁄4 oz Tonic Maison and Figlia makes a fabulous bitter orange aperitif. Aplos is like yuzu and hemp; Ghia has a rich ginger, stone fruit and Mediterranean herb note; and Curious No. 2 is a punchy blend of pineapple, lime and ginger. Perhaps my favorite, though, is Botivo, which is a sharp, bittersweet blend of rosemary, honey and dark lemon; it’s just incredible.

To be clear: none of these drinks taste alcoholic, and they all have a slightly syrupy mouthfeel, but they also all are delicious. Given my past experiences with non-alcoholic spirits, I was supremely skeptical, but I was uniformly blown away. They’re not overly sweet, they have complex, rich flavors and they’re simply delicious. Add them to sparkling water with lemon juice and you have an amazing spritzer. Add them to a non-alcoholic beer and you have a booze-free spiked beer. Add them to NA sparkling wine and you have a sophisticated, delicious spritz. You can also drink them with sodas for a more casual drink. Most of them go well with lemonade and some garnish, and the Crossip makes a fun partner for Diet Coke.

These are all fundamentally good products, and once you’ve flushed the holidays out of your system — or just want a slightly wetter January — they work beautifully in cocktails. Take a shot of Botiva and add two shots of bourbon and an egg white and you have a sophisticated whisky sour. Add half a shot of Crossip and a smaller amount of brown sugar for a unique, smoky Old Fashioned. Love Margaritas but want some more fun? Take almost any of the drinks listed here and use them instead of triple sec.

I will not condone direct spirit replacement. Non-alcoholic vodkas, whiskies, etc. don’t have the bite of the normal versions, and usually taste bad, so what’s the point? I utterly hate them. A lot of NA gin — even expensive stuff — tastes like weak parsnip water. It’s disgusting.

If you want classic cocktails that you already enjoy, try recipes that use aperitifs, and thus work well with the non-alcoholic ones (like sbagliato, negronis, Aperol spritzes). Alternatively, go for drinks that taste similar with or without alcohol. A good mojito made with nice apple juice (and no added sugar) is fantastic. A Bloody Mary without vodka or tequila doesn’t have the same bite, but it’s still damn tasty. And if you can’t stand that, then user lower alcohol alternative spirits. Quarter Proof is the best option here, and though their gin, tequila and vodka alternatives don’t stand up against the full-strength stuff, they’re pretty tasty. If you really want a margarita but are watching the calories, this is a fabulous solution.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s January 2025 World edition.