Review: "Alcohol-free" spirits

January 2018 | 8 minutes

Spirits depend heavily on alcohol for flavour. So, do alcohol-free equivalents work? We tested two popular non-alcoholic spirit options, at completely different price points, to find out.

Seedlip Spirit 94 and Garden 108

Calories: 0

These have to be some of the most unusual additions to the alcohol-free drinks world. And we'll confess, we didn't know quite what to make of them. They're marketed as "the world's first non-alcoholic spirits". It may be a matter of how you define that, since drinks claiming to be alcohol-free whiskeys have been around since the 1990s (although not always well-received!) Seedlip's recipes are based on a remarkable 17th century text The Art of Distillation. The products have the look of artisan gins, and that's what we thought they might taste like, but there's not a sniff of juniper here. The two drinks have very distinct flavours:

  • Spirit 94 is made with allspice, cardamom, oak, lemon and grapefruit, and it's the oak that comes through strongest. This stuff tastes really woody - like sandalwood, maybe
  • Garden 108 contains peas, spearmint, rosemary and thyme. Again, one flavour comes through most, and that's the peas

Once we'd bought them, our next question was how to drink them. They come with serving suggestions - premium tonic for the 94 and elderflower tonic for the 108 - so we had a go at that. The result is two very light, very clean drinks. We could imagine drinking them on a river-boat trip on a summer's evening. This is not G&T. In fact, we're still not sure what it is, but if you're in the market for unexpected flavours, give it a go. The price is pretty top-end: £26 for a 70cl bottle in Tesco. Unless it really does cost close to that to produce, we're guessing this was a deliberate decision to make this a premium brand. That may be smart business, but it puts it well out of reach of many drinkers' pockets.

Looking at the nutritional information, they are calorie-free, so the only calories you might want to think about are the ones in your tonic.

Check out their website for more details https://www.seedlipdrinks.com/

Teetotal GNT

Calories per 100ml: 26 (52 per bottle)

Launched in 2015, the Teetotal GnT is a very different drink to Seedlip - much more like a conventional gin-based drink. In short, it's a GnT for people who are off the alcohol. According to the company, during their taste testing with more than 10,000 people, the vast majority of people could not tell that this was a non-alcoholic drink. Neither could we.

Unlike Seedlip, it comes premixed in 200ml bottles, matching the trend for ready-to-drink bottles and cans of spirits and mixers in the major supermarkets. It also seems well suited to pubs, where it should fit in as a more interesting alternative to neat tonic.

There's a good backstory to this drink too, and to the Yorkshire-based company that makes it. A publican, a research chemist and an entrepreneur decided it was time to come up with an adult alternative to fizzy pop for people who weren't drinking. The aim was to produce something as good as its alcoholic equivalent, using only natural ingredients and keeping the sugar content low - a drink that was not too sweet, something which made you feel part of the party, but without the alcohol. They may well have succeeded!

Check out their website for more information http://ttscompany.co.uk/consumer/

Alcohol free spirit options are a great way to enjoy a tasty drink and not feel like you're missing out! Have you tried any non-alcoholic spirit drinks? Let us know in the comments below!

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