All products featured on ArtfulLiving.com are independently selected by our editors. We may earn commission on items you choose to buy.
I love a Negroni. I’ve experienced blending Brunello di Montalcino, and grown malbec and syrah grapes in Mendoza, Argentina (I own 10% of a three-acre vineyard there with friends). I grew up in cocktail culture, starting with sloe gin fizzes by a baseball field in high school, college house parties with an endless fountain of grain alcohol, and then right on to the King Cole Bar in New York City and rosé all day in East Hampton. But I’m getting older and can’t drink the way I used to — nor do I want to.
Then, this happened. Earlier this year, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, called for a warning label on alcoholic beverages to alert consumers of the direct link between alcohol and cancer (seven types, from mouth to esophagus to breast to liver), citing the chilling fact that alcohol consumption directly contributes to 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 related deaths each year. Health experts now say — contrary to prior beliefs — that no amount of alcohol is healthy, or even safe.
Photography by Alex Lau
Luckily, all of that bad news has coincided with the exciting rise of a pupu platter of nonalcoholic (NA) beverages, from St. Agrestis’ Phony Negronis, canned mocktails, and NA beers and wines available at your local supermarket. Club soda with lime is no longer the only alternative; new drinks are made with functional additives, flavorful bitters, and grapes from Friuli and Montepulciano, Italy. They’re packaged in bright colors and pretty pink splits; they advertise — and sell — on Instagram.
In 2023, the global market of no- or low-alcohol beers, wines and spirits was valued at more than $13 billion with sales projected to grow more than 7% a year — reaching about 4% of the overall alcohol market, according to the Boston Consulting Group. “The norms as to what a typical dinner, party or concert looks like, as it pertains to drinking culture, have lifted,” says Taylor Foxman, founder of The Industry Collective, which works with some of the fastest-growing beverage brands in the country. “Non-alcoholic beverages have technically been around for many decades, but the wider boom in the States happened as the pandemic began to subside.”
Photography by Alex Lau
These fancy (and not-so-fancy) NA drinks can be seen as a reflection of a cultural shift, too, away from associating “fun” with alcohol only and toward a more health-conscious lens. We never really needed alcohol to have fun, but culture and marketing have made us believe otherwise. Plus, a lot of young people just aren’t drinking alcohol; many millennials and Gen Zers don’t view or treat it as a social lubricant the way that Boomers or Gen Xers may. “Weed has a lot to do with this,” says Allison Robicelli, who writes a column for the Washington Post about NA beverages. “And young kids don’t want to be the drunk person on TikTok.”
The explosion of this new-ish product is not just driven by young people though. Consumer demand for NA beverages comes from the moderate drinker, says co-founder and CEO of the Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage Association Marcos Salazar, not from people who are sober or in recovery. In fact, 94% of consumers who purchase NA products still drink alcohol, according to NielsenIQ. Salazar says this category has been made possible in the past few years by advanced technology that removes alcohol and the “innovative entrepreneurs creating great-tasting NA adult beverages.”
Robicelli makes it a point to normalize nonalcoholic beverages in her column, not as a trend, but as a serious and welcome solution for the many people who cannot drink alcohol. She began drinking — and went to rehab — at age 13. “I’m sober now, but just admitting I struggled with alcohol carries a huge amount of social stigma,” she says, so she always approaches the topic with empathy. The prevalence of NA beverages has also allowed her, and others, to participate in going to parties and bars “without being served flat Diet Coke from a soda gun,” she adds.
Photography by Alex Lau
I’m moderate, choosing to drink less for health and clarity reasons. I’ve completed 27 years of Dry January. I discovered alternatives like Seedlip and For Bitter For Worse that gave me spirit without the spirits. I learned about wine from my dad in high school, but as he got older, he stopped drinking. As he aged, I spent more time visiting him, and one day, my friend Patrick dropped off a case of Bud Zero. A can of this on ice became my 5 p.m. ritual, one that I will forever associate with my dad’s last year of life. I would even serve him a taste in a mini A&W Root Beer mug from one of our cross-country trips and we would both have a laugh.
As a semi-serious wine drinker, I’m relieved to find serious winemakers getting into this biz, too. Prima Pavé is a top seller at The New Bar, a California-based brick-and-mortar and online retailer that carries only NA beverages. Marco and Dejou Marano both come from generations of winemakers in Italy and California, respectively, and they have a home wine cellar with at least 500 bottles. While Dejou was pregnant, the couple wanted to enjoy the same quality of wine minus the alcohol, and so, Prima Pavé was born along with their son.
“Our goal was to create the finest 0.00 alcohol by volume (ABV) wine,” says Marco. “We look at it from vineyard to bottle, considering the terroir and varietals, just like traditional winemaking.” They didn’t want it to taste like grape juice or iced tea, but a full experience of wine notes, with the alcohol removed. It worked; their sparkling rosé brut, blanc de blancs and still wines are handcrafted from Italian grapes and are not faux wines but their own veritable vinos. Prima Pavé has won more than 30 medals at prestigious wine competitions like the San Francisco International Wine Competition and is served at luxury hotels such as the Fairmont and Four Seasons. Vogue even featured it in a story about how to create a beautiful NA bar at home.
Photography by Alex Lau
An at-home bar is a great place to display and drink festive NA beverages. Lulu Powers, celebrity party designer and “entertainologist” in Los Angeles, calls cocktails “sneakys” because she has an at-home bar called the Sneak-Easy, and non-alcoholic drinks “strokeys” because she actually had a stroke and likes to have an NA drink. “If I’m making a passionfruit margarita, I’ll offer a ‘strokey’ version, too, so that guests can choose either,” she says. “A lot of people don’t drink, but they like to look like they’re having a cocktail.”
Now, I’m happy to stay at home to imbibe NA options like Ghia or Figlia aperitifs, or maybe an Optimist Botanicals Cali Spritz or Aplós Mandora Negroni. Or even my Bud Zero on ice — all of which can be easily ordered online since they’re alcohol-free. And if I’m out and about, I’m constantly discovering new mocktail menus at restaurants. “Two years ago, none of this was an option,” says Marco of Prima Pavé. “Now it’s a no-brainer.”
