We’re always on the lookout for great alcohol-free drinks that pair well with food and still feel ‘grown-up’ and fun to drink. We recently shared our recipe for The best ever 0% alcohol white wine swap-out, see it here, and this is still our go-to favourite. It’s the best substitute for Emily’s favourite drink, a chilled white wine, we have ever found!
But we like a bit of variety, and as part of our recent clean-eating fortnight, we wanted a few more good alcohol-free drinks in our roster. And after a bit of fun mixology, we found five more!
We did also try a few of the more obvious options. Many 0% beers in particular and now really successful, but unfortunately we also wanted to limit gluten during our fortnight and that was much trickier. We also tried some alcohol-free wines. Most weren’t great, we’ll be honest. We did like Codorniu Zero cava, the best 0% sparking we have tried, but even that felt a little lacking in flavour after the first glass. But it’s still a good option.
We also tried several alcohol-free spirits, and these were much more interesting. We were already converts to the fiery ginger Mother Root, as we use this in the white wine swap-out. But the widely available 0% gins by Tanqueray & Gordons are also both very good. However, in a ‘straight’ gin & tonic, we found the tonic flavour drowned out the ‘gin’, even in quite large measures. Three Spirit Livener we felt was also very good, and we use it as a tequila substitute in some of our drinks below.
So with these spirits in mind, and armed with a variety of juices, soft drinks & flavourings, we got creative with some cocktails, coolers & other swaps – and our best results are below!
Gold Medal – The white wine swap-out
Our white wine swap is still the best 0% option we’ve tried, made with white grape juice, white tea, lemon, tabasco & Mother Root. It’s a very satisfying drink, good with food, and easy to drink more than one glass of over an evening. It as closely replicates white wine as we can make it. Find the full recipe and method for it here. We’d happily drink this any night!
See our post: The best ever 0% alcohol white wine swap-out for more.
Silver Medal – 0% Greyhound
A Greyhound is a simple classic cocktail, traditionally made with either vodka or gin and fresh grapefruit juice. We prefer the gin version as it’s more flavourful, and that’s particularly true when using 0% gin.
We make this cocktail lighter, lower sugar & easier drinking by adding soda water. We’ve long enjoyed grapefruit juice & soda as a drink in its own right, but adding a measure of 0% gin really lifts it into something more sophisticated-tasting.
We measure by eye for this one, apart from the gin. We do about a 50:50 mix of juice & soda, though a mix which has more soda in is also nice – lighter and more refreshing, especially if you plan to drink more than one. This drink is nicest if the juice & soda are both fridge-cold.
Pour the grapefruit juice into a medium-sized glass, then add about 30 to 40 ml of 0% gin, or to taste. Top up with soda water and enjoy!
Bronze Medal – Virgin Paloma
This was Estella’s favourite of the cocktail options, so takes the bronze, though Emily marginally preferred the Tinto de Verano below of these two.
A Paloma is another delicious classic cocktail, made with tequila and either grapefruit soda or fresh grapefruit juice & soda water. It also normally features some agave syrup, and sometimes fresh lime juice. We like adding lime juice if using grapefruit soda, but find the drink too sharp if using fresh juice, as we did today.
It’s surprisingly hard to find 0% tequila, at least in UK supermarkets. But the botanical spirit Three Spirit Livener has a similar profile & ‘kick’ to tequila, and works well in this drink. Add about 50ml of it, or to taste, to a large glass. Also add about 65ml of fresh grapefruit juice.
Next add about 10 ml of agave syrup (or other light syrup), or to taste, and stir well. Also add ice – we add one really large cube or a few small ones.
Top up with soda water, stir, and garnish with a slice of lime or grapefruit. Enjoy!
Highly Commended 1 – 0% Tinto de Verano
Ok we’ll admit it, we were a bit sceptical about this one. Its original, a blend of red wine & lemonade, sounded frankly odd. But it’s such a popular summertime drink in Spain that we thought we’d give it a go. And we’re glad we did.
A Tinto de Verano would normally be made with equal parts red wine & lemonade, over ice. We substituted the red wine with red grape juice, plus added a shot of Three Spirit Livener to add that alcohol ‘burn’. For lemonade, we used zero-sugar 7-Up as this has a more lime-forward, less sweet profile that nicely counters the sweetness of the juice. But any not-too-sweet sparkling lemon drink would work.
Add the red grape juice to a medium glass, then top up with the same amount of lemonade. Add one tablespoon of Three Spirit Livener, or to taste.
Stir well. Our lemonade & grape juice were fridge-cold, and we prefer this drink without ice. But add some if you wish. Garnish with a slice of lemon or lime and enjoy!
This simple drink is delicious and easy-drinking, with a hint of Campari-lemonade about it. it’s firmly on our list of new go-to 0% drinks.
Highly Commended 2 – The red wine swap-out(s)
As our white wine swap-out was so successful, we wanted to create one for red wine drinkers. The profile was easier to replicate than white wine, but we like the end result just very slightly less. This is perhaps because the ingredients need to be stored chilled – at room temperature this drink is much nicer.
We replicated the characteristic tannins of red wine with black tea. We then added fruitiness and the grape profile with red grape juice. This gave a drink that was nice, but lacking in acidity. So we experimented with a few additions to counter this, before settling on sour cherry juice. The result is as close as we can get to red wine!
First brew some black tea. Let it steep for a little longer than you would for a cup of tea – we let ours stand for about 5 minutes.
For our batch today, we used 500ml of tea with 400ml each of the two juices. This gives a ‘wine’ flavour which is still fruity, but at the dry end. To make a drier drink, add more tea and/or sour cherry; for a fruitier, slightly sweeter drink add more grape juice.
Sour cherry juice can be hard to find and/or expensive so we looked for an alternative. The best we found was to replace it with no-added-sugar cranberry juice. This gives a drink that is less like red wine, and more like a dark rosé – very pleasant to drink, but much sweeter.
Try both and see which you prefer! The sour cherry version is definitely more like red wine, but the cranberry version is lighter.
Highly Commended 3 – Virgin Kalimotxo
This was another drink we were sceptical of at first. If the Tinto de Verano sounded odd, this one sounded downright unpleasant – red wine mixed with cola! But a Kalimotxo is such a popular drink in its native Basque region of Spain, that we decided to give it a try. It was another surprise hit, especially with Estella.
A Kalimotxo is traditionally made with a 50:50 mix of red wine & cola, over ice. We replaced the wine with red grape juice, and used a diet cola to cut back on the sugar in the drink. We experimented with a few ways of replicating the wine’s ‘kick’, and for this drink preferred the fieriness of the Mother Root.
Start by filling a large glass just less than halfway with red grape juice. Top up with the same amount of cola & stir.
Now add one tablespoon of Mother Root, or to taste. Stir again, add some ice and enjoy!
This was the surprise hit of the day – sweeter than the others, but very enjoyable!
After a fun afternoon of mixology, we were delighted to have six new drinks in our alcohol-free roster. We strongly recommend them all! Of course, you can also try the cocktails with their alcoholic counterparts as well – they’re all great drinks. But the alcohol-free versions are so good you won’t need to. We hope you enjoy making – and drinking – them! Cheers!
Jake sticks his nose in
Which is your favourite? Mine is the Greyhound of course! Give it a salt rim and you have a Salty Dog cocktail. You can also add a salt rim to the Paloma. Cheers!
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