Top  BEVERAGE  Trend

In the rush to revive Prohibition-era cocktails and introduce signature, contemporary bar programs, nonalcoholic specialty drinks could easily get lost in the shuffle. That would be a big mistake. Beverages sans alcohol represent an opportunity for significant sales and customer satisfaction — from healthful juices and flavorful, house-made sodas to indulgent smoothies and sophisticated “mocktails” — to say nothing of ready-to-serve energy drinks and regional specialties.

“There are a lot of reasons customers would want to avoid alcohol but still drink something interesting and flavorful,” says Jackson Cannon, bar manager at Boston’s Eastern Standard Kitchen & Drinks. “Mocktails and other nonalcoholic specialty drinks can be every bit as interesting as alcoholic beverages, and sometimes even more of a challenge to create.”

At Eastern Standard, the cocktail program runs an ambitious gamut, from Standards and Heritage drinks like the Fifty Fifty and the Sazerac to such specialties as the ES Gin Flip, made with raw egg, and the Strawberry Cobbler, infused with fresh berries and mint.

Cannon and his staff have gone to extra lengths to create nonalcoholic delights that are both sophisticated and sippable. These include the Stormy Monday, with lime, bitters and nonalcoholic ginger beer; the Sophisticated Lady, muddling cucumber with cranberry and fresh lime juices; and Abbey’s Punch, which resembles a fruity Rum Runner without rum. Each is garnished and presented like a real cocktail.

We were very clear that we did not want to set non-drinkers apart by serving a dull or childish-looking beverage, says Cannon.

Offer something that’s not just a refresher, but also a way to take part in the experience and in the social event of coming to a place like Eastern Standard, he advises.

Flavor — not just sweetness — is at the root of every Eastern Standard mocktail. For the best-selling Sophisticated Lady, the bartender muddles two slices of cucumber, peel intact — a touch that adds that pleasantly vegetal bitterness — with a pinch of salt in a mixing glass. He then adds 2 ounces of cranberry juice and an ounce each of fresh lime juice and house-made simple syrup to shake over ice and strain into an up martini glass with a cucumber garnish. The result is a beautiful, well-balanced drink that looks like a classic Cosmopolitan and has enough of a culinary profile to pair with food.

A lot of thought went into the creation of such mocktails, where something must replace the astringency, flavor heft and volume of the alcohol. Even the ice is handled differently when there’s no alcohol. The vodka in a Cosmo causes the ice to melt, and ‘melt’ is a technical issue when crafting a drink; it’s a tool for getting a desirable amount of water into a drink, explains Cannon. So we had to play around with proportions (in the Sophisticated Lady) until we got the result we wanted.