Drinking sophisticated adult drinks without alcohol

Beautifully balanced, layers of flavours, tiny bubbles to dance on the tongue without making your eyes tear, and you want to keep going back for more. A sophisticated drink that obviously didn’t need alcohol to taste good!

For my birthday this year we headed to one of Perth’s fine dining restaurants the Wildflower. We paired our menu with Non-Alcoholic cocktails. Fingers crossed, I was hoping to get at least one good cocktail, but the fact that I got 4 exquisite drinks was a bonus!

Why hadn’t I ever done an alcohol-free tasting before, and why were my expectations so low?

Probably because ‘mocktails’ or ‘virgin drinks’ have the implication that these drinks are somehow prudish or not fun.

Probably because the lack of alcohol means that it’s undoubtedly made from juice and therefore lots of sugar, and these too-sweet concoctions have tainted the rep of ‘mocktails’.

Probably because there haven’t been great non-alcoholic spirit options available in the past, and your drink probably had flavoured soda water in it.

But wow – did these delightful drinks blow my cotton socks off!! What an experience it was to have a better-made cocktail, without anything exclusive about alcohol in that process.

One of my cocktails used Ovant Grace, which I am in love with. That complexity and layers of flavour in my cocktail was 50% from this distillation (no not different types of fruit juices or bitters). Grace is a non-alcoholic botanical distillation, which is the result of years of dedication to craft and experimentation in search of perfection.

Seedlip Garden was featured in another cocktail. Lemon myrtle syrup made this non-alcoholic spirit sing with its herby and fresh flavours. Sipping slowly lets you experience the complexity in this drink and really appreciate how well it was made, again without using alcohol.

Now,… I get it! We aren’t all mixologists, so how do we elevate and highlight these spirits, how do we know what goes well together, how do I make them at home? A few tips…

We have a recipes section on this website that has some incredible concoctions, with well made Non-alcoholic spirits.

Keep it simple with premium mixers and sodas and an aromatic.
Always use fresh ingredients – fresh lemon/lime juice, fresh pineapple juice, make your own simple syrups (so much cheaper and it is really very simple), fresh fruit.

Experiment!!

Let’s normalize drinking sophisticated adult drinks without alcohol.