Non-alcoholic drinks ‘boring’

Push begins to liven up drinks for the non-drinkers

For years, Carolyn Rebeyka has met friends at the same Regina bar every Friday afternoon for drinks. Sometimes they’d be celebrating a birthday or triumph at work, other times it was just to catch up.

Then, about three years ago, her doctor put her on medication and suggested she avoid drinking to better monitor her body’s reaction to the drug.

“It wasn’t permanent, but I actually kind of liked not drinking,” Rebeyka said, adding she was never a heavy drinker, but enjoyed not feeling the effects of alcohol. “Even if you had a few drinks, you could still feel the difference the next morning,” she added.

“It’s not that you’re hungover, but you can tell the difference.”

Now Rebeyka rarely drinks, but going to bars and restaurants is still a big part of her social life.

Like many others who have decided to cut back on drinking, Rebeyka has found there are often few interesting drink options that don’t include booze. Many of the traditional options are uninspired (juice, sparkling water) or overly sweet (Shirley Temples, virgin daiquiris).

“The options for alcohol, those are almost unlimited,” she said. “It seems like bars don’t want to be as creative when they’re serving their nondrinkers.”

It’s not completely commonplace yet, but there is a growing push from some establishments to offer more interesting and complex non-alcoholic drink options.

Kate Boushel, a bartender at Montreal’s Atwater Cocktail Club, said customers come in asking for non-alcoholic drinks “every night” and she enjoys making them since it allows for creativity on her part.

“I’ve had fun and made cocktails that look exactly like other cocktails on my menu, just instead of alcohol, I’ve replaced it with low-sugar fruit juice,” she said.

“I’ll do apple juice with a touch of carrot and maybe some thyme syrup, with a little bit of our house tonic,” she added. “That will be refreshing, light, but it will still be more complex than, let’s say, a virgin mojito.”

People ordering non-alcoholic drinks often don’t want to draw attention to the fact that they aren’t drinking, and in some cases, they’ll actually request Boushel’s help in not blowing their cover.

This often happens with pregnant women, when it’s too early to make an announcement.

“With women who are pregnant, funny enough, the bartender is one of the first people who finds out,” Boushel said. “They don’t want their friends to know, so (they ask), ‘Can you make me look like I’m drinking?”’

A similar request also frequently comes from people who are “out and about with business partners, or clients,” she said. “Maybe they’ve had enough, but they want to keep up appearances.”

The team at Pretty Ugly cocktail bar in Toronto have gone even further to accommodate patrons who don’t drink. They spent nearly a year developing “placebo” liquors: non-alcoholic concoctions intended to replace actual booze. Owner and bartender Robin Goodfellow has developed an alcohol-free amaro, a Campari, and a plum wine.

“I don’t feel that a bar is a place that only should serve people who want to get drunk,” Goodfellow said, adding he likes drinking but hates being drunk, and that many of his friends abstain from alcohol.