Last month, I decided to go alcohol free for 5 weeks. 

What? Why!? You are not the only one to have expressed surprise.  

Drinking good quality wine and other alcoholic beverages has been a personal goal for a while and I’d never been interested in learning more about mocktails or non-alcoholic options, save for enjoying the occasional pop or cold water.  

So, when I decided to undertake this personal experiment (mostly for weight loss, but also for other hoped benefits including improved sleep and perkier mornings), my loved ones were surprised, but very supportive.

We made trying to find non-alcoholic options a goal at a concert, a ball game and numerous restaurants.  Surprisingly, for all the talk these days about options and Gen Z being non-alky, it was challenging to find interesting and tasty alternatives.  And, they were all over-priced as far as I was concerned.  

In Victoria, one restaurant mocktail was billed as a take on a Negroni, but it tasted simply like iced tea.  And another restaurant told us they wouldn’t even give a second diet pop as a refill – customers had to pay for a second drink instead at C$4 each.  In many instances, I simply ordered water as a C$10 or more alternative seemed ridiculous.

Then half way through the month, we went to a store in Toronto, a pop up called Sobr on Yonge where they are “…making sure everyone enjoys fancy drinks”.  Now that’s what I was talking about!  There are Sobr stores located in four different provinces. 

We bought a selection of drinks, all priced in the C$7-8 range –

Phony White Negroni – from Brooklyn, NY, it’s a ready-to-drink mocktail with great marketing (the tiny bottle is adorable) and clocks in at 44 calories.  It’s made with quinine and citrus to taste adjacent to a white negroni.  The bitterness of the quinine tricks your palate into imagining Campari.  While it’s not terrible, drinking tonic and ice water with lime would accomplish the same and cost a lot less.  It was more akin to a gin and tonic as opposed to any sort of Negroni.

Ghia Mocktails (Lime) – from LA, another ready-to-drink mocktail.  To give the bitter vibe, theyve used rosemary, lime peel and ginger extracts, with acacia and vegetable juices.  So, at 50 calories, it actually seems to be healthy for you (and you can pronounce all the ingredients), but ultimately I found this tasted like beet juice.  I could get that at the juice bar for less and fresher, so… I didn’t even drink the second one.

Nova Non-Alcoholic wine-based sparkling drink – from Benjamin Bridge Winery, Nova Scotia with 0.5% abv with 70 calories.  This is the only one of the four drinks I actually enjoyed and it was probably because it tasted like a wine spritzer, the bubble lasted, and it had an aroma of wine from the 0.5%.  It wasn’t too sweet and had a cute shade of pink.  I could feel part of the party with this in my hand.  

Ultimately, the search continues.  The one drink I have had on repeat during this experiment is the Olé mocktails.  Thankfully Costco sells them – as does every other bar and grocery store.  I can pour one into a glass and pretend it’s something fizzy and fun.  The yellow can with mango flavour is my favourite.  And they’re so much better than the other widely found alternative by Sparkmouth.  

Since Dry Summer has drifted into Dry Fall, please share any feedback you may have.  I will start looking into non-alcoholic beers in the meantime.  Finally, if you have tried a Corona Cero (left picture), you’ll know never to do so again; they are horrible.