Non-Alcoholic Spirits: A Beginner's Guide to Seedlip, Ritual and the Rest

Last reviewed: August 2026

The first thing to understand about non-alcoholic spirits is the thing the marketing works hard to avoid saying: they do not taste like the drinks they are named after. A bottle labeled as a gin alternative is not going to taste like gin. If you buy one expecting that, you will pour it, taste it neat, make a face, and leave a thirty-dollar bottle in the cupboard to judge you.

Understood correctly, though, they are useful, and a couple of them are genuinely good. The trick is knowing what they actually are before you spend the money.

What these things actually are

Alcohol carries flavor and adds a burn and a weight that these products cannot reproduce, because the alcohol is the part they have removed or never had. What is left is the botanical side: the herbs, the citrus peel, the spices, the bitterness. So a non-alcoholic spirit is closer to a very concentrated, unsweetened flavoring than to a drink you would sip on its own.

That is why they come alive when you mix them and fall flat when you do not. The tonic, the soda, the citrus and the ice are not optional extras. They are what turns a spoonful of intense botanicals into something that drinks like a cocktail. Judging one of these bottles by a neat sip is like judging bitters or vanilla extract the same way.

The ones worth knowing

Seedlip

Seedlip more or less invented the modern category and is still the one most bars stock. It is distilled, sugar-free and calorie-free, and it comes in a few distinct expressions rather than pretending to be one specific spirit. Garden 108 is the herbal one, all peas, hay and spearmint, and it wants tonic. Grove 42 is the citrus one and is the easiest to like, good in a highball with soda and a squeeze of orange. Spice 94 is warmer, with allspice and cardamom, and does better in the colder months.

It is also expensive. A 700ml bottle runs around thirty-two dollars at list, roughly what a decent bottle of real gin costs, which is worth sitting with before you buy three of them.

Ritual

Ritual takes the opposite approach and makes direct stand-ins: a gin alternative, a whiskey alternative, a tequila alternative, a rum alternative. These are built to slot into a specific cocktail rather than to be appreciated on their own terms. The rum one is the standout, spicy rather than sweet, with clove, star anise and a bit of burnt orange, and it makes a respectable mojito or piña colada. If you have a particular cocktail you miss, Ritual is the brand that tries to hand it back to you.

The others you will run into

Lyre's makes the widest range and leans closest to mimicking real spirits, with mixed results depending on which one. Ghia is not pretending to be anything, just a bitter apéritif meant to be poured over ice with soda, and it is one of the more satisfying options precisely because it is not chasing a spirit it can never catch. For an Aperol-spritz shape of drink without the alcohol, Ghia or a similar apéritif is a better route than any of the gin alternatives.

How to actually use them

Start with the highball, because it is nearly impossible to get wrong. Two ounces of a citrus-forward alternative like Grove 42, top with tonic or soda, plenty of ice, a slice of something. That is a real drink and it took twenty seconds.

From there the rule is that these want more support than real spirits do, not less. A little more of the alternative, a little more citrus, a little more bitterness, because there is no alcohol holding the middle of the drink together. If a mixed drink tastes thin and watery, the fix is usually a dash of bitters, a squeeze of lemon or a bit of salt, any of which puts back some of the sharpness the alcohol used to provide. Aromatic bitters do contain a trace of alcohol, so leave them out if that matters to you and reach for salt or citrus instead.

Temperature and glassware do more work than seems fair. Cold and in a proper glass, these drinks are convincing. Lukewarm in a plastic cup, they are sad. This is true of real cocktails too, but the gap is wider here.

Where to buy them in New York

This is where New York's alcohol laws get slightly absurd in your favor. Because these products are not legally alcohol, a liquor store is not the obvious place to find them, and many will not carry something they cannot ring up under their license. Yet plenty of the larger independent bottle shops and Total Wine do stock them, alongside the non-alcoholic wines.

Ordinary retail is the other route. Whole Foods carries a decent range wherever it exists in the state, and the bigger supermarkets increasingly keep a shelf of it near the mixers rather than near the beer. In the Capital Region and other upstate areas, availability is thinner than in the city, and online tends to be the practical answer.

Buying online is genuinely the smart move for a first purchase. Seedlip ships direct, and the specialist non-alcoholic retailers will send a mixed selection or single servings, which is the only sane way to find out whether you like Garden 108 before committing to a full bottle of it. Given what these cost, a sampler is cheaper than one wrong guess.

Are they worth it?

For the right situation, yes, with a clear caveat about the price.

If you want a drink that feels like a cocktail at the end of the day, or something to hold at an event that is more interesting than soda, a good non-alcoholic spirit does that job and does it well. Ghia over ice or a Grove 42 highball are legitimately nice drinks that happen to have no alcohol in them.

What they are not is cheap, and they are not a like-for-like replacement for the specific spirit on the label. Go in expecting an interesting botanical mixer rather than a free copy of your usual drink, buy small before you buy big, and the odds of being happy go way up. Go in expecting gin, and you will join the large club of people with a resentful bottle of Seedlip at the back of a cupboard.

One more note if this is about recovery rather than simply drinking less. Some people find that a sophisticated non-alcoholic cocktail scratches the itch and makes an evening easier, and some find that the ritual of building and sipping a drink that tastes like a cocktail is a rehearsal they would rather not run, especially early on. That is a personal call, and a good one to talk over with a sponsor or in a meeting rather than to settle alone in a store aisle. There is a fuller version of that argument in the guide to non-alcoholic beer.