The nonalcoholic market is changing. Producers are encountering an increasingly sophisticated NA customer who is fluent in the intense flavors of spirits and less inclined to compromise on those expectations.
“The future of non-alc is not nonalcoholic margaritas,” says Tawny Lara, cofounder of Brooklyn-based botanical beverage brand Parentheses—part of a slowly but steadily growing number of NA amaro, aperitif, and digestif options. “Some people will always want that, but our drink is showing people are interested in these new options.”
The market has exploded with options for those subgroups, says Aqxyl Storms, owner of Minus Moonshine—a “dry drinks and potions” shop in Brooklyn. Yet, even looking just at NA amaro, Storms says there is plenty of room for growth.
Avoiding the “Dupes”
The brands building a following have arisen from a couple of common goals: to make a sophisticated, complex, NA option that leans into bitterness; and to create entirely new flavor profiles with limitless choices for botanicals and spices, avoiding the trap of attempting an exact replica of an alcoholic product and missing the mark.
In a way, NA amari, aperitifs, and digestifs offer a blank canvas. To be sure, the founders behind brands such as Parentheses, Curious Elixirs, and Figlia started from alcoholic reference points:
- Lara of Parentheses says she missed the intensity of bourbon.
- Curious Elixirs founder John Wiseman had Amaro Montenegro and Cynar in mind when conceiving Curious No. 8, a “black and blue” amaro.
- Figlia founder Lily Geiger, meanwhile, was after the elevated experience of sipping a spritz.
Yet all three intentionally set out to create something new. At Parentheses, cofounder Nick Mechak says he had long been disappointed in “dupes”—NA products aiming to be exact replicas of their alcoholic counterparts. Geiger says she specifically wanted to avoid creating something that tasted like alcohol.
To these founders, the magic of making an amaro or aperitif lies in the endless possibilities of combining the category’s signature botanicals in different arrangements.
Photo courtesy Parentheses
Flavor and Mouthfeel (in Parentheses)
Crafting an NA amaro or aperitif, they say, is more about capturing the spirit of those categories than nailing exact copies. Producers can focus on botanicals to deliver that layered experience, factoring in varied flavors and aromas at different times. They can also lean more heavily into bitterness and acidity to offer a more grown-up beverage for those avoiding alcohol.
The main hurdle in creating an NA amaro or aperitif, then, lies in mouthfeel. A crucial characteristic of these beverages is some level of mouth-coating viscosity—but how to achieve that without ethanol and traditional distillation? It’s a challenge that daunts the entire NA cocktail category. Yet companies are finding different paths to flavor-and-mouthfeel success.
For Parentheses, the answer lies in vinegar and seaweed. The brand has two different botanical NA spirits: Before and After. Before is a bitter tonic featuring gentian, ashwagandha, prickly ash, cardamom, citrus, and rose. After leans smoky and woody with angelica, lavender, chamomile, cherry bark, marshmallow root, and black cardamom. Both are vinegar-based and include seaweed for texture.
Mechak was a sommelier when he quit drinking in 2016. He kept working as a wine director, and he started making vinegar from the extra wine he’d receive, eventually starting a company called Sour Humanoid Vinegar. He experimented with different vinegars, including some with seaweed infusions; he also tinkered with aging the vinegars in barrels from Brooklyn’s Kings County Distillery. Among a series of odd jobs, he started picking up shifts at nearby amaro distillery Forthave Spirits; he says that was around the time he and Lara learned about oxymels—vinegars infused with herbs and sweetened with honey. After more experiments, Mechak and Lara created a vinegar-based beverage infused with herbs for a holiday party—it was a hit, and Parentheses was born.
Those seaweed experiments came in handy for Before and After’s amaro-like mouthfeel. “Seaweed has alginates, the stuff that makes it jelly-like, and that adds a little body and also counteracts the tartness of the vinegar,” Mechak says.
For sweetener, Mechak and Lara moved away from the honey that was standard in oxymels. “We thought about honey because of mouthfeel but went with organic sugar to keep it vegan, and also because we just liked the flavor better,” Lara says. They decided to limit the sweetness, allowing the vinegar’s acidity to shine.
Because Before and After are nonalcoholic, they’re technically considered food products and not spirits. So, Mechak and Lara get what’s called a scheduled process from a local food processing authority—essentially, a regulated system to ensure food safety. Mechak designed the vinegar-making setup based on a 19th century method called a trickling generator; he constructed it largely from beer-brewing equipment.
“The vinegar I make takes about a month—it varies depending on temperature and season,” he says. “I pull whatever amount I need, infuse the herbs into it for about two weeks, and bottle it. I don’t do filtration—I figure people willing to buy a weird vinegar drink are willing to put up with a little sediment.”
A Novel Path to No. 8
For its No. 8 amaro, Curious Elixirs uses blackstrap molasses to help build that essential mouthfeel. Wiseman says it also contributes some caramel character, like you might find in Amaro Montenegro. They also use acacia gum, which has a sticky texture that lends a sense of viscosity.
Wiseman says he wanted No. 8 to be “something that [has] rich body to it, along with bitterness, herbaceousness, and the touch of sweetness that balances our favorite amaros.”
He also wanted it to be unique. “Maybe it exists somewhere, but I’d never come across a blackberry amaro and thought blackberry could impart some rich, dark flavors I wanted to come through.” Blueberry and fig also factor in, along with herbs, spices, and a touch of ginger.
For botanical bitterness, Curious Elixirs has a proprietary process for making an alcohol-free gentian extract. “Alcohol-free gentian extract didn’t exist until we made it,” Wiseman says. “It gives an earthy bitterness, like what you’d get from Aperol.”
Rounding out the flavor profile is earthiness from three adaptogenic mushrooms geared toward making No. 8 restorative. “We want Curious Elixirs to have some benefit to the body outside of the flavor itself,” Wiseman says.
Photo courtesy of Figlia
Shaping a Worthy NA Sipper
At Figlia, Geiger says she knew she wanted to make an aperitivo because even the alcoholic version inspires slow savoring. “You never see someone pouring a glass of Campari and chugging it,” she says.
For Figlia’s NA aperitivo, Fiore, Geiger says she sought to highlight certain notes essential to those Italian spirits while bringing in fresh ingredients to create something distinctive. She knew that balance between bitterness and sweetness would be key.
“I didn’t want cloyingly sweet or overly bitter where it’s not even appealing to anyone,” she says. “Europeans are okay with intense bitterness, but the U.S. is not completely there yet, and I wanted to satisfy both those looking for that bitterness and those who didn’t want so much of it.”
Sugar helps to temper that bitterness while adding body—but Figlia doesn’t add extra sugars, instead using those in the ingredients to build the balance and body. White grape juice is part of the equation, as are certain botanicals and spices in powdered form, lending body without too much sediment. Geiger uses clove for an amaro-like warmth, rose for floral notes, and bitter orange, lemon, lemon balm, and rosemary for an aperitivo-friendly citrus-and-herb bitterness.
Going for More
At Ritual Beverage, acquired in September 2024 by Diageo, the processes behind its Ritual Zero Proof Aperitif Alternative are proprietary. However, Ritual founder David Crooch—now Diageo’s general manager of NA beverages—says their watchword when developing it was “more.”
“More heat, more viscosity, more flavor—more, more, more,” Crooch says. “The goal of these products is to have a delicious, heavily flavored drink in your hand—the opposite of a vodka soda.”
That more-ness includes a tongue-coating viscosity that allows the taste of the aperitif to last longer, so the drinker can unpack more specific flavors and aromas.
Ritual approaches each of its products with a specific cocktail in mind, Crooch says. For their gin, it was a gin and tonic; for their tequila, a margarita. When creating their aperitif, they worked around the negroni, setting out to create something with enough flavor and mouthfeel that it could stand against either an alcoholic or nonalcoholic gin, or work as the centerpiece of a spritz. (Crooch advocates not only for alcohol-free cocktails, but also for reduced-alcohol versions by combining traditional spirits with Ritual offerings.) The Aperitif Alternative features complex notes of rhubarb, chicory, gentian, anise, rose petal, chamomile, and charred grapefruit.
New Paths to Discover
The NA spirit market is still so young, Crooch says, that there’s not always much consistency. However, new quality offerings appear to be emerging every day—especially in the amaro, aperitif, and digestif space.
At Minus Moonshine, many of Storms’ favorite products are herb-based, as a growing number of brands realize the potential for building entirely new flavor profiles with assorted botanicals. Those brands also continue to chart new courses to satisfying the need for texture.
One of the shop’s top sellers is an NA spirit called The Pathfinder. “They use a fermented and distilled hemp, which creates a fantastic mouthfeel,” Storms says.
Customers are ready for more sophisticated, complex NA options. “The bitter factor makes these beverages suitable for an adult palate versus a children’s palate,” Storms says. “I think a lot of … Americans still think of mocktails as a juice and sugar, which is just not the case. So, when people are unafraid to venture into the NA space and discover the aperitif, digestif, and amaro category, it’s almost shocking for them at first because they don’t expect things to be this good, or this accurate. … It’s really exciting.”