Across the United States, bars and bottle shops are adding new products to their shelves. Some are <0.5 % alcohol by volume, while others have no alcohol at all. Drinks like these make up the emerging “no and low” category, a beverage trend that has taken off in the past several years. New non-alcoholic (NA) producers are coming out with beers, wines, whiskeys, and more that skip the booze, but try to keep the flavor.
Traveling around the United States, it becomes apparent just how ubiquitous no and low drinking options are becoming. Posh non-alcoholic bottle shops stocked with eye-grabbing brands are popping up in coastal destinations like Manhattan and Charleston. And the trend has pushed these products into less expected places like Jackson, Mississippi. There is clearly a shifting demand for a new kind of beverage, but what does that say about the underlying drinking culture in America?
Speaking with bartenders, bottle shop owners, and recovering alcoholics, the trend becomes exalted in individualism. Mindful drinking, as many are calling it, is selling itself as a systematic push to allow individuals to have more options at the bar so that they can drink socially in the way that they please.
To answer my questions about non-alcoholic cocktails and mindful drinking, I turned to Derek Brown, co-founder of Washington DC’s Mindful Drinking Fest and author of Mindful Mixology: A Comprehensive Guide to No- and Low-Alcohol Cocktails.
“Mindful drinking, in our contemporary context, is about drinking with intention,” says Brown, “It’s that simple. In that way, it isn’t about moderation per se or about abstinence. It’s about a person aligning their drinking with their goals.” Those goals can be health-focused, sobriety-aspiring, or socially-conscious. Ultimately, it’s up to the drinker.
Voices in the mindful drinking space are not against the consumption of alcohol. Sèchey, a non-alcoholic bottle shop in Charleston, uses the term “alcohol-flexible” to describe their approach. Many new consumers exploring NA products talk about “sober-curiosity.” Even the mention of “low” in the tagline “no & low” stays firmly in the realm of non-abstinence. Accordingly, the backbone of the mindful drinking movement’s rhetoric is focused on providing substitutes, options, alternatives, additives, and analogues.
“My expertise is in making a drink and serving it to somebody,” explains Brown, whose bar, the Columbia Room, was named Best Cocktail bar in America in 2017, ”When I do that, I want to make sure that there are options.” Across the country, non-alcoholic options are coming to cocktail lists at an impressive pace. Not all of these non-alcoholic cocktails contain NA spirits, but an increasing number do.
Brown approaches the non-alcoholic cocktail as a sensory experience. He looks to replicate the intensity of flavor, piquancy, length, and texture of spirituous cocktails with non-alcoholic ingredients. He lists ginger, citrus, salt tincture, aquafaba, and a variety of vinegars in his arsenal of alcohol emulators. Equipped with such ingredients, neither the cocktail nor the drinking experience hinge on the presence of alcohol.
The idea is to empower customers who might not want an alcoholic beverage to drink socially with all the trappings and flavors of mixology and none of the compromising chemical side effects. Brown puts it well, “Mindful drinking is about an intrinsic decision, not about an extrinsic decision with someone saying you shouldn’t do this. No, you should go out with people and enjoy beverages. You should be social–that’s a critical part of our wellness as human beings.”
From a business perspective too, there is a considerable portion of the American market that bars have ignored entirely because they are not drinkers. NA offerings might bring some of those sober dollars through the saloon doors. Even for consumers who are drinking alcohol, the NA options can pique curiosity, prolong a night out, and mollify the morning after.
Beans & Bananas, an upscale general store in the Belhaven neighborhood of Jackson, Mississippi, has only been open 12 weeks. Already, they have a display of non-alcoholic beers, wines, and spirits, flanked by cocktail making paraphernalia and some regional craft beer. Kay Buckner, who directs the food and beverage program at the shop, explains how the store’s grand opening during Dry January really got people interested in the products.
“Whether physical health, or mental health, everyone has their own thing,” he says, speaking to the individualistic approach to mindful drinking. It is his individual preference to take a bottle of 0% abv wine to social occasions as a non-alcoholic substitute. But, he says, the bottle invariably elicits curiosity from the rest of the night’s attendees, regardless of what they are drinking.
Buckner recognizes one problem in the NA space: it’s hard to find a good bourbon substitute out there to satisfy the typical Mississippi drinker. Many of the wines and spirits in the NA space are herbal, vinegary, or bitter. Buckner says that NA options can require an acquired taste, just like their alcoholic counterparts. Especially given that Mississippians have a famously sweet palate.
But, in a state where abstinence sentiment is alive and well, it is curious to note that the customers at Beans & Bananas are often the same customers who are drinking craft beer next door at Fertile Ground Beer Co. This mindful drinking outpost is at the cutting edge of modern and craft beverages in the state of Mississippi.
Meanwhile, on King Street in Charleston, South Carolina (a busy drinking district,) a new bottle shop called Sèchey sells only non-alcoholic bottles. Elise Nelson, the bottle shop’s Creative Director, imagines a world where drinks are like salads, “When you order a salad, you add protein, that’s how it should be with a cocktail and liquor.” As window shoppers drift in off the street, Nelson launches into a welcoming spiel that explains what the shop is. Some pedestrians have heard of such things as non-alcoholic whiskey and shop around. Others are confused and politely take their leave.
About 80% of the customers at Sèchey still drink alcohol. The shop is just focused on expanding the availability of other options and providing more alternatives. Nelson says that NA drinks are a good tool for pacing drinks throughout the night, and their functional offerings with “euphorics” can elevate moods without booze. At the same time, the storefront in Charleston’s busy drinking district is a great example of face to face education on an emerging category.
Beans & Bananas is on board with the education too. They endeavor to offer cocktail classes several times a year. Half of the classes will focus on non-alcoholic mixology.
No one in the mindful drinking space is telling alcohol drinkers to stop drinking. A second important distinction, they are also not telling non-alcohol drinkers to drink NA beverages. That is, non-alcoholic wine may be a good option for some drinkers focused on sobriety, but it also may be dangerous for others.
Brown chimes in on this theme, “Everyone’s recovery is unique. I don’t want to advocate for people in recovery to drink nonalcoholic beer–that could be the downfall for them. I am only an expert in my only relationship to alcohol.”
Indeed, there are recovering alcoholics out there who swear off the idea of anything that resembles their former drinks of choice. Writer John Seabrook recounted his experience with NA beverages as an individual who was 5 years sober in an excellent article in the New Yorker.
Many “near beers” and non-alcoholic options do still contain some trace amounts of alcohol, so for those in recovery who eschew things like wine in cooking, these are off-limits. Some online Alcoholics Anonymous forums declare, “non-alcoholic beer is for non-alcoholics.” But others find that these drinks can be useful in social settings to maintain sobriety. Once again, the distinction is up to the individual, but new options are now available.
On neither side of the equation are proponents of mindful drinking taking away from an individual’s free will. They speak without the moral gusto of the Prohibitionist or the seduction of the demon distiller. They are trailblazing a new kind of space–at least from a marketing point of view.
So, what is mindful drinking telling us about drinking culture? It seems that the mindful drinking camp is ambivalent to what anyone drinks–so long as they have a longer and more diverse menu to select from. But, logically speaking, how can one be a proponent for a certain kind of drinking (i.e. mindful) without taking an interest in how people drink?
One could argue that the growth of NA products is simply filling a gap in the beverage market that has long been unsatisfied. But, if such an organic explanation were the case, it would preclude educational efforts. The consumer should demand the product because the demand already existed, not because bottle shops and bartenders are explaining how NA products can fit into a modern drinking culture.
It seems more likely that NA offerings and mindful drinking are actually two distinct ideas that have come to rely upon each other so closely that they appear indistinguishable. Mindful drinking does not require commercial NA beverages, but their existence can facilitate a smoother (and trendier) transition into a lower abv lifestyle. NA beverages, on the other hand, are really part of the larger commercial obsession with celebrity-endorsed, innovative, craft, and cachet-garnering beverages. Mindful drinking is a great way to get consumers to be interested in the products.
The reality is that neither mindful drinking nor NA beverages are new. Brown explains, “In a cultural context, mindful drinking is something that has been practiced and talked about for a long time. Cultures from antiquity–ancient India, ancient China, ancient Greece even–always have these sorts of religious texts that talk about alcohol.” He explains, “Then you have societies like the Aztecs who had outright prohibition of alcohol, except around religious ceremonies. So it’s a roundabout way of saying that mindful drinking has always been apart of the cultural conversation around alcohol.”
Indeed, the Chinese emperor Cao Cao made an edict prohibiting alcohol in 207 CE, although religious uses were exempt. The Aztecs were famous for only permitting the elderly, priestly, and warrior classes to drink alcohol outside of religious ceremonies. Attendees of the ancient Greek symposium shamed those who became too drunk from wine. And the Greeks would cut their wine with significant quantities of water, sometimes five parts water to one part wine–an ancient precursor to the “low” abv offerings on today’s shelves.
Neither mindful drinking nor non-alcoholic alternatives are new ideas. So the mindful drinking movement of modernity is taking ideas from the past and spinning a new thread with a focus on the individual. In this regard, Brown is advocating for a change in particular aspects of our drinking culture. He starts where we all start, learning what alcohol is.
“When I ask people where they learned to drink, very often it’s from an older sibling, an older cousin, a friend, or someone in college.” Brown asks, “Is that the best way to learn about alcohol? Probably not.” America needs a re-education on drinking, and mindful drinking is a way to pause and reflect on how we got to the bar we currently drink at.
On top of this, Brown sees a systematic problem in the hospitality industry itself. He explains, “When I was 16, I started to work in bars and restaurants, so I started to learn how to drink from line cooks and lifetime waitresses. Very often, they would say, ‘Just show up the next day for your shift, it doesn’t matter how much you drink.’ I do want there to be options. I feel particularly as someone who is an insider in the hospitality industry.”
Even in these areas of drinking inculturation where Brown sees obvious problems, he only approaches it from an individual point of view. He wants to inspire change “from politics of the first person,” speaking to people face to face, sharing his own lived experience.
To return to Brown’s definition of mindful drinking: “Mindful drinking, in our contemporary context, is about drinking with intention. It’s that simple. In that way, it isn’t about moderation per se or about abstinence. It’s about a person aligning their drinking with their goals.” He’s right, by this definition, it isn’t about moderation. One can drink with the goal or intention of getting blackout drunk (and I would argue that a fair share of folks do just that), qualifying them as mindful drinkers. This, of course, also seems mindless.
Many of the people interested in mindful drinking are interested in fitness. Alcohol, in this view, is an unhealthy part of the diet. Others come to the bar with real health issues that prevent the consumption of alcohol. Still others are looking to moderate the role of alcohol in their social lives. The rhetoric of mindful drinking allows for infinite motivations, NA is just another option for the newly mindful drinker.
As mindful drinking finds its place in American bars and liquor cabinets, can a push for alternatives to beer, wine, and liquor change underlying attitudes towards alcohol consumption? Ultimately, it will be up to the consumer to decide what drinks they are going to pay for. But Brown is confident that the space that alcohol occupies can be replaced with NA alternatives, even if they are homemade.
“All of the experiences that we ascribe to alcohol can happen without alcohol. When you’re out drinking non-alcoholic drinks you feel buzzed, but you’re not tripping and falling over.” He says, “There is no reason that a cocktail can’t be delicious and not contain alcohol.”
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