Cocktail Directory

Your Guide to Cocktails, Sip & Garnish

A good drink starts here.

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A good alcohol-free drink is not a cocktail with the interesting part removed. It is a drink built deliberately, with the same structure that makes any drink work: acid, sweetness, bitterness, and something with texture.

What makes an alcohol-free drink work

Alcohol does specific jobs in a glass. It carries aroma, it adds weight on the tongue, and it provides a faint burn that stops sweetness from cloying. Take it out and you have to replace those jobs, not just the liquid.

• Acid is the backbone. Fresh citrus, verjus, or a vinegar shrub. Without it an alcohol-free drink reads as squash.
• Bitterness gives it an adult edge. Strong tea, grapefruit, chicory, or a non-alcoholic aperitivo.
• Texture replaces the weight. A syrup with body, a little salt, aquafaba for foam, or simply serving it properly cold over good ice.
• Aroma does the heavy lifting. A slapped mint sprig or an expressed citrus peel is doing more work here than in a spirited drink.

On non-alcoholic spirits

They are useful and they are expensive. Some are very good; some are flavoured water at forty dollars a bottle. None of them taste like the spirit they are named after, and the ones that try hardest tend to disappoint most. Used as one component in a properly built drink, the good ones earn their place. Used as a one-for-one swap, they rarely do.

You do not need them to make a good alcohol-free drink. Most of the recipes here do not use them.

The recipes

Our alcohol-free recipes are tagged and filterable alongside everything else — they live at the same quality bar, not in a sidebar. Browse all recipes, or see everything alcohol-free.

This section is actively being built out. Expect it to grow substantially.