In a country where your 21st birthday opens the gates to adulthood, drinking alcohol is a rite of passage. Despite a plethora of research demonstrating alcohol’s negative impacts on the body, and the morning-after hangovers, countless people still participate in this culture day after day.
Walk into a bar or restaurant on a Friday night. You’ll see stemmed glasses of blood-red wine, salted glasses with a wedge of lime and tall foaming glasses of amber-orange beer. Cocktail menus overflow intimate tables, listing accented and obscure names in italics from places in the world you’ve never seen on a map. Panna Cotta is paired with amaro, an Italian after-dinner digestif with a sweet syrupy flavor. Crème brûlée is paired with tawny port, a dessert wine aged in wooden barrels with nutty toffee flavors. A sommelier mingles with a crisp white napkin folded neatly across his left arm, pouring bottles neatly from their ice buckets and inquiring about next course pairings. A bartender swirls a cocktail shaker, then strains an ice-cold gin into a martini glass topped with a twist of lemon. The patrons cheer to life’s successes, drink away their sorrows and migrate to the dance floor with a drink in hand. A gap of silence settles on a first date, which they fill by sipping their glasses between parsed lips and commenting on the tannins in the particular vintage of this bottle. A well-suited man asks to buy a woman’s drink, the start of their polite conversation about the job market and today’s weather. An office team cozies up to the edge of the bar, rolling their eyes together about the day’s meetings and tomorrow’s agenda. It’s a space of connection and camaraderie, though it’s implicitly reserved for those who engage in the consumption of alcohol.
For those who are sober, pregnant, religious or simply don’t enjoy all of the pleasures that do come with alcohol consumption (even if it’s occasional), the gathering places of consumers are awkward and not well suited for them. For people who choose not to drink at a night out, they face a constant barrage of questions. Why don’t they have a drink? Would they like a drink? What should they sip on when the conversation lulls? What should they do with their hands when they’re not holding a drink?
How do you connect with coworkers, network, make friends, meet future spouses, if not at a bar or out at dinner, paired with drinks?
Now imagine a Friday night with all the same things: glasses of wine toasting, bubbling bottles of beer and brightly colored copper mule mugs splashing under the circling colored lights. Some of these people might be drinking alcohol; some may not. Some of them drink to forget, some to remember. No one knows who’s who once the drinks are on the dance floor, but they’re all there together. In the morning, they’ll wake up without REM–damaged sleep or the irregularities of neurotransmitters that cause hangovers
In what I see as an effort to feel better, Gen Z — those currently aged 12 to 27 years old — are drinking less. They’re taking over a new term, sober-curious, that’s a bit between stone-cold sober and the long-standing binge-drinking college culture that we’ve all seen in the movies.
The addition of well-crafted cocktails, nonalcoholic spirits and craft nonalcoholic beers to menus in both restaurants and bars opens up the possibility for not only sober people’s inclusion but also of changing America’s drinking culture. Normalizing skipping alcohol, even for one night, because you have a big day at work or want to go on a run in the morning, or are just not interested in the hangover, will provide massive benefits to this sphere of socialization. Without centering around the alcohol itself, people can engage in these community-based settings on any day of the week, and their bodies will be happier. In trend-catching places like LA, alcohol-free bars like Stay Zero Proof bar, Bar Nuda and Kava Kana are hitting headlines.
Switching to nonalcoholic alternatives makes sense for wine and beer lovers, as their particular flavor profiles can be mimicked in the replica models. Wines can be paired with entrees, and beers still boast their zingy variety of flavors to provide refreshment on a hot summer day. But for mocktails, is it worth paying nearly full price for what might appear to be juice and soda water?
The difference here is that in mocktails, increasing demand encourages more thought into their crafting and an increase in supply. With elaborate distillation processes, the input of expert mixologists and the touch of a garnish on top, true mocktails can cost nearly the same as “the real thing.” But people are willing to pay. The quality and benefits of nonalcoholic alternatives are high, and the artful cocktail-esque touches don’t hurt, either. Gen Z’s insistence on an inclusive culture, even at the bar, has propelled nonalcoholic products to the market and continues to insist they look (and taste) how everyone else’s cocktails do.
At Hippo in Highland Park, the Green Wizard mocktail features kiwi, green tea, basil and lemon bubbles. Eagle Rock’s Capri Club offers a light spritz option and nonalcoholic Negroni to sip on its sidewalk patio. Ruby Fruit’s Botanical Tonic fizzes with rose geranium, bitter herbs and citrus in Silverlake.
Zero-proof spirit stores are popping up across the US, even in brick-and-mortar establishments like Silverlake’s Soft Spirits. Many mimic the taste of alcoholic beverages, and even some heavy-hitter brands like White Claw and Guinness have come out with nonalcoholic versions of their products in recent years.
Even within the home, pouring a glass of wine or cracking open a can of beer after a stressful day at work is common practice. It’s a ritual of self-care, one that can be engaged with over cooking dinner or helping kids with homework. Nonalcoholic alternatives replicate this ritual of self-care without the groggy daze or ringing head in the morning.
Some nonalcoholic spirits promise a buzz, a sleepy-time spell or an energizing punch. The scientific accuracy of benefits behind additives like adaptogens, kava and CBD may still be in development, but the placebo effects of the mocktails alone are worth the journey. Whether they’re tapping on neurotransmitters in the brain to produce dopamine and GABA releases, or you’re just happy to be out for the night with your friends, I’m not sure. Either way, mocktails offer a solution to the harmful peer-pressure culture of alcoholism, a way to fit into this essential socialization atmosphere.
Contact Mollie Barnes at mbarnes@oxy.edu
