The rise of non-alcoholic beverage pairings

There’s a slight bustle in the cream-and-gold dining room of Raffles, Mauro Colagreco’s London restaurant, as I set out to enjoy the five-course menu. Glasses of something that looks like champagne bubble gently on the tables, but what I’m drinking won’t give me a hangover. Colagreco is the latest chef in the capital who has decided to offer a “sober” or “non-alcoholic” wine pairing.

“We’ve attracted attention for our non-alcoholic pairings in the four months we’ve been open,” sommelier Vincenzo Arnese tells me as I savor the Thomson & Scott brand of de-alcoholized sparkling chardonnay. The alcohol-free trend is gaining momentum. Participation in “dry January” continues to grow. This year, 21% of people took part in the U.S., while in the U.K. more people participated in it than in the last 10 years combined. And it’s not just in January. Generation Z is turning its back on alcohol, and younger people are more likely not to drink.

Arnese tells me that his non-alcoholic pairing is vegan, gluten-free and non-alcoholic, not just low-alcohol. He adds that he threw the rules out the window to create it.

I try a “lettuce,” Colagreco’s signature dish (with cockle sauce and vermouth). If you opt for the wine pairing, it comes with vermouth, but for the sober menu, it comes with a cocktail of Seedlip Garden 108 gin infused with peas and mint, paired with non-alcoholic vermouth, infused with marine succulents and dressed with wild celery oil.

To go with the chocolate and burnt rosemary ice cream for dessert, there’s a cocktail made with Crossip, a non-alcoholic alternative to whiskey. “Sometimes we draw inspiration from the dish; if there’s a star ingredient, we highlight it. Other dishes are paired with the drinks,” Arnese says.

At the Michelin-starred restaurant Sollip in London Bridge, general manager Vita Gargiulo says nonalcoholic pairings have been just as popular as wine pairings and are split 50/50. Here, all nonalcoholic pairing drinks are made in-house. “Everything is very, very creative. There’s always a difficult ingredient, but you have to try to make it fit, like a puzzle.” Gargiulo observes that with wine there are set rules and that the idea is the same with non-alcoholic pairings. “You want the drink to pair well with the food, but you can use almost anything from the kitchen.”

A starter of tagliatelle with calamari is paired with a sweet pear juice with a touch of fermented pear. Creating a non-alcoholic pairing is more work than uncorking a bottle of wine, Gargiulo says. “We thought our red mullet dish would pair well with a Tom Collins cocktail, so instead of gin, we use juniper berries infused for three days; the kitchen makes cranberry syrup, and we mix it into a cocktail.”

The sober pairing is usually cheaper than the one with wine. At Colagreco’s restaurant, it costs €70 ($75.40), compared to €146 ($157.27) with wine. Other London restaurants offering non-alcoholic pairings include Da Terra, The Water House Project and La Dame de Pic. The establishments claim that it’s not just teetotalers who are opting for sobriety. It’s all about the trend of cutting back. “Six different glasses of wine with a meal is too much,” opines Gargiulo. “If it’s two people, they can choose one of each and compare; it’s all part of the fun.”

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