Spirits and various mixes for a NA Craft Cocktail
SeedLip Brands, Beaconsfield, Woodlands Hill (UK)
The Seedlip Brand is only eight-years-old and was voted #1 Best-Selling Non-alcoholic Spirit by Drinks International for three years in a row. Here is the backstory: Ben Branson, SeedLip’ founder, stumbled upon a book written by Dr. John French in 1651, named The Art of Distillation. It documented the use of distilled herbal remedies utilizing copper stills to combine nature and alchemy for medicine, with the goal of resolving the diseases that plagued those times. Ben soon purchased a small copper still and started experimenting with distilled herbs grown in his home garden. For about two years, he worked diligently to perfect his own process of maceration, distillation, filtration, and blending, where each individual botanical ingredient is distilled separately, before blending. This process forms a liquid that results in no sugar, therefore no alcohol, but lots of flavor.
Ben launched Seedlip Spice 94 in London’s Selfridges in November of 2015, and it was an astounding success. One thousand of his handmade spirits sold out within three weeks, and the second thousand sold in three days. The third batch sold-out online within 30 minutes. His unique ingredients start with a warm, aromatic blend of Allspice and Cardamom, with fresh citrus top notes to balance the long bitter finish.” One bottle of Ben’s Seedlip Spice 94 makes 12-14 cocktails. All of Ben’s NA spirits are made with all-natural ingredients and are shipped in sustainable packaging. Other flavors include Grove 42 and Garden 108, that are uniquely satisfying NAs, without the dreaded hangover.
St. Agrestis, Brooklyn, NY (USA)
In the early 20th century, the refreshingly bitter Negroni cocktail is said to have been concocted in Florence, Italy by an Italian Count named Camillo Negroni. While patronizing the Bar Casoni, the Count summoned the bartender to strengthen his popular Americano cocktail (James Bond’s favorite) by replacing the soda water with straight gin. The bartender garnished the drink with an orange peel instead of the normal lemon peel, and the Negroni was birthed. Negroni parallels the Martini in the shrine of cocktail classics.
To our surprise, there are some huge fans of the Negroni cocktail at St. Agrestis. With the drink’s consequential history to its assorted recipes, St. Agrestis believes the Negroni is one of the most delicious libations on earth, so they offer a variety of ready-to-drink formats, including their award-winning Non-Alcoholic Phony Negroni®, which is produced and bottled by at their Brooklyn, NY distillery. The Phony Negroni® is made with 30 non-GMO, organic ingredients and shows notes of piney citrus and florals, but with the same bitterness of the classic cocktail. Carbonation is also added to help mimic the bite of true alcohol. The NA Negroni or Phoney Negroni is a delightful option to have “shaken, not stirred”.
FREE AF Brand, New Zealand
Good vodka is crafted to be as close to flavorless as possible. So, to find a good, smooth NA Vodka is not an easy task. However, New Zealand-based ready-to-drink (RTD) brand FREE AF launched a collection of alcohol-free canned cocktails, including a light and crisp vodka-like spritzer with a whisper of tropical fruit like flavored sparkling water, but the smokey notes give it a bold tone that closely resembles a good vodka. Lisa King, the company’s founder, realized she was suffering from vertigo every time she consumed alcohol. So, in 2020, and out of need, she created the FREE AF brand — some say as a play on the phrase “Free as fuc&”, to express her new-found freedom from alcohol and its associated debilitating vertigo. Others have reported she aptly named the brand as a way to reach the rise of a generation of cool young-adults who now embrace a healthy, alcohol-free (AF) way of life, not typically practiced by their elders. FREE AF promotes a revolution for NA, AF, Non-Alcoholic, and Nonnies as a chic, clean way to socialize.
