The Abridged version:
Sacramento-area bars now offer improved options for people steering clear of alcohol.
We asked bartenders in Sacramento, Rancho Cordova, Davis and Arden Arcade what to order when not drinking at their bars.
Popular nonalcoholic options include mocktails, hop waters and locally made kombucha.
Maybe it’s Dry January. Maybe you’re pregnant. Maybe you’re sober. Maybe you’re just taking a night off drinking, or “zebra striping” — alternating boozy drinks with nonalcoholic ones.
Whatever your reason, Sacramento-area bars have bettered their options for customers shying away from alcohol. Gone are the days where O’Doul’s and soda fountains are the only offerings; today’s bartenders mix and pour nonalcoholic drinks crafted with care.
We asked six local bartenders, bar managers and owners: “What do you recommend to customers who aren’t drinking?” Responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Sully Gonzalez, bartender at The Local by Dunloe Brewing
“The dry-hopped lemonades are pretty popular for people who drink beer but don’t really want to, you know, have the alcohol in there. For ours, Centennial hops go in after they make a hibiscus-lime concentrate. It’s nonalcoholic, but it’s a little sweeter and it’s fizzy. So it kind of tastes like beer, but it’s not. You’d be surprised, it actually sells pretty well.
“We have a super light lager, the Barbless Hook, for people who kind of want to wean off alcohol or not get super drunk. It’s 2.5% ABV, so it’s almost like drinking a NA beer, because the NAs still can be up to 0.5%.
“We also have seltzer waters and sodas and stuff like that. You have to provide some other options so that customers aren’t like, ‘oh, man, I have to drink.’”
Trevor Easter, partner and creative director at Irish Hospitality Group (The Snug, Ro Sham Beaux, The Butterscotch Den)
“We’re in the golden age of NA. It’s such a blessing that we have the options that we currently do. Our staff does a really good job at integrating a lot of the NA options we carry and folding them into cocktails. So my No. 1 one recommendation always is: Tell them what you like and the NA category, and the staff handles it.
“Our biggest seller, and the one I’m the biggest fan of, is the Phony Negroni from St. Agrestis. They are absolutely amazing, and it’s just a bottled frizzante Negroni. All of our bars carry it. They make a mezcal version that’s smoky, they make an espresso Negroni that has caffeine in it. We pop it open, pour it over a big rock of ice and garnish it, and it is to die for.
“About 10% of our employees are sober, which is a stark contrast from 10 years ago. When non-sober people try to make things for sober people, they often misunderstand what those people are actually looking for. The greatest NA bartenders out there are baristas. If you go to Scorpio Coffee and try some of their tea drinks, those are far superior to a lot of the NA cocktails I get elsewhere. I think bartenders are knocking on the wrong door when we go, ‘Let’s make, like, a gin martini thing.’
“We have had NA wine at Ro Sham Beaux in the past, and it just isn’t up to the quality standard that we stand by. We want the NA thing to be its own thing, not some knockoff of gin or whatever. When it comes to wine, it feels that way, where it’s like you’re consuming an inferior product, because someone told you it tastes like chardonnay but it doesn’t taste anything like chardonnay.
“The only outlier is NA beer. It is mind-boggling how good it is. Like that was a crappy category forever — they just could not get it to taste like anything other than malty water, and now we’re getting these NA beers, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ The Guinness 0 blew my mind, and this is coming from the Irish Hospitality Group. When you hand somebody that, they’re like, ‘Wait, you handed me the wrong thing.’ And we’re like, ‘I swear to God, that’s the Guinness 0.’”
Brandon Umipig, bar manager at Wildwood Kitchen & Bar
“We have a blood orange margarita that we make with CleanCo’s alcohol-free tequila, and a Moscow mule lychee mocktail. So we usually recommend one of those, because they still feel like a cocktail, especially if you’re celebrating and everyone’s got a drink that looks fancy and you want to be able to cheer with something that looks like that. That’s a good option.
“Other than that, we have a nonalcoholic beer — Heineken 0.0. Some people just want the carbonation of a beer, the feeling of drinking a beer. So usually, beer drinkers will lean toward that. A lot of people have been asking us if we have nonalcoholic wine. We don’t carry that personally, but a lot of restaurants I know are starting to carry that option as well.”
Wildwood Kitchen & Bar serves virgin blood orange margaritas, left, and virgin Moscow mules. (Shelley Ho)
Keegan Currey, managing partner at Kupros Craft House
“Being someone who doesn’t drink, it can be a tricky situation at establishments when you’re out to eat and drink. About two Januaries ago, I put together a specifically nonalcoholic cocktail menu just for Dry January. We ended up keeping it in the rotation year-round, because it seems people’s drinking habits have changed quite a bit over the past three to five years, and more often than not you find people in a group that aren’t drinking. They want to be out, they want to socialize, but they don’t want to partake in an alcoholic beverage. So we basically put together a menu that gave them the opportunity to enjoy a craft cocktail experience without having to drink alcohol.
“We’ve been featuring Lyre’s, mostly because it is a true 0% ABV spirit. We’ve done a variation on an espresso martini. We’ll do some plays on gin cocktails — for instance, one similar to a White Linen that we do with elderflower in it, and a gin equivalent that Lyre’s offers. Another one we do is an old fashioned with their American ‘whiskey,’ or a mojito that we do with their nonalcoholic option.
“I still don’t partake, even if it’s nonalcoholic versions of traditional cocktails, just for my own peace of mind. And that’s my own personal preference based on the decision to eliminate alcohol from my life. It’s just better for me not to partake in the faux liquors as well. Honestly, I’m just a San Pelligrino or club soda kind of guy, something that’s pretty simple and still somewhat effervescent.
“We also carry an assortment of hop waters, which I will partake in once in a while, which are essentially carbonated beverages that don’t really have any flavor other than a hop infusion. There’s quite a few different breweries that make those, so every now and again, I’ll have one of those, which I tend to appreciate. They’re not nonalcoholic beer, so I feel like they’re far enough off actually drinking a beer.”
Cory Grassinger, bartender at Louie’s Cocktail Lounge
“If they like beer, then we have the Heineken 0.0, the Michelob Ultra 0.0 and the Corona Cero. But I also make a whole lot different mocktails, too.
“I’ve made Shirley Temples. I’ve made a virgin margarita before where I mixed sweet-and-sour mix, lime juice and water, then salted the rim and added a lime so that it looked like a margarita. I’ve made a virgin piña colada with blended pineapple juice, piña colada mix and sweet-and-sour mix.”
Sam Mruk, bartender at Bike Dog Brewing
“I always recommend our rotating KC Kombucha flavor. It’s always nonalcoholic, and it’s made locally in Sacramento. Next, I would recommend our hop water. We make that at our brewery ourselves, flavoring it with hops and fruit. Right now, it’s passion fruit, orange and guava.
“We also have NA beer from a brewery called Untitled Art out of Wisconsin, which is, in my opinion, one of the better nonalcoholic beers out there. With nonalcoholic beer, a lot of the time it ends up tasting like unsweetened iced tea with hops, and it’s kind of a turn-off for people who are looking for a beer flavor. These guys actually make the beer and then remove the alcohol, instead of making a beer that does not have alcohol.”
Benjy Egel is the senior food editor at Abridged. Born and raised in the Sacramento region, he has covered its local restaurants and bars since 2018. He also writes and edits Abridged’s weekly food and drink newsletter, City of Treats.