You’re Missing Out If You Don’t Get the Non-Alcoholic Pairing

Non-alcoholic drinks historically have a less-than-stellar reputation, and it’s not entirely unwarranted; O’Douls, the booze-free beer replacement, never made sense to me, and then there’s the recent barrage of non-alcoholic canned drinks tied to one specific month when we're all supposed to be sober before reverting back to our debaucherous selves.

All that said, I’m not against non-alcoholic drinks, but I am against bad ones. Still, whenever I've had the option at a fine dining restaurant to choose the wine pairing or non-alcoholic pairing, I never really felt that I had much of a choice to make. 

When the waiter at Copenhagen’s plant-based fine dining restaurant Ark asked me what I’d like to drink, I paused. The prices for the wine pairing and the non-alcoholic pairing were the same. So, given the fact that I was still feeling extremely gluttonus from a 50-course dining experience the night prior, and Ark had a charismatic waiter who seemed to really favor these non-alcoholic beverages, I decided to try something new.  Worst case scenario, I figured I’d wash it all down at a Brown Bar later. 

When the first dish — a beautiful foraged salad plate of sorts — came out, my plans for an after-dinner nightcap slipped away. The plate arrived with a dressing jar, which I was instructed to drizzle on top of the leaves. The accompanying beverage arrived in a wine glass, but looked nearly identical to the dressing. Its taste — something I’d place between an unbroken vinaigrette and kombucha — tightened this connection. “The foraged rhubarb and gooseberry were fermented in house, then steeped alongside Greek mountain tea to create this beverage,” the waiter explained. Unfortunately, he left before I could ask if one could also drink the dressing, even though the drink was plenty satisfying.

In fact, many of the drinks served as part of the pairing were mind-bending as far as traditional pairings are concerned. Some were presented in coupes and wine glasses; others arrived as shots, and one particularly memorable beverage came in a rocks glass. It was a tomato tonic topped with whey foam salvaged as excess from the made-in-house ricotta (of course, used in the dish it was paired with). Even the non-alcoholic spirits used are impressive; The team infuses Seedlip with foraged chamomile, spearmint, lemon verbena, black currant leaves and ginger, and blends the result with tomato water and apple juice (just before lowering its acidity for a more pleasant drinking experience).

If this all sounds confusing and over-the-top it’s because it…is. However, I'd argue that for all of their bells and whistles, the process around making non-alcoholic beverages is fundamentally less daunting to understand relative to, say, winemaking terms like carbonic maceration or malolactic fermentation. At least, one could say there were no secrets going on. When the loud man behind me received a glass of Gamay, the sommelier explained that the producer of the bottle died along with the secret to what made it so delicious. As you can expect, the loud-man was not too happy with this explanation. 

But it is exactly this distinction, this decision to be unflinchingly open and relentlessly creative that is making non-alcoholic pairings more interesting, luxurious, and, if you ask me, oftentimes more delicious than their alcoholic counterparts. 

Julia Momose, who makes the spirit free pairings and helps with the cocktail menu at Oriole in Chicago, knows a thing or two about constructing a noteworthy non-alcoholic pairing menu. "What I think is great about wine pairing is the knowledge that somms have, to be able to find something that goes well with the chef's creation,” she tells me. “But the beauty of spirit-free pairings is [that] you are making every element from scratch. The drink is designed and engineered to go with the dish.” Momose goes so far as to call this a more “true pairing.”

But Momose takes her pairings even further, potentially validating my impulse to use the salad drink at Ark as a dressing. “There was one drink for a dessert where you could drizzle the pairing over the dish and it could be a cohesive thing,” Momose says. “Or you could just drink it. It was up to the guest.” 

It is because of this creativity and newfound craft that Renwick says he has begun to use the non-alcoholic pairings as a barometer of sorts. “Whenever I go out, I’ll always get a non-alcoholic drink because it’s like a test,” he says. “If someone is good at their non-alcoholic pairing, the food is always good. It just shows they’ve put effort into the whole experience.” 

If you haven’t come across a non-alcoholic pairing menu quite yet, chances are you will soon. Momose thinks its prevalence comes down to one factor: the availability of non-alcoholic spirits.

I, for one, was surprised to learn that Nixta Taqueria in Austin, TX even has one, if only because of the sheer kitchen space they are working with. After Chef Edgar Rico won a James Beard Award for Best New Chef in 2022, the restaurant has been flooded with acclaim and guests — and rightfully so, the food is amazing. But if you’ve ever been there, you know that the kitchen is about the size of a New York City bathroom. When a restaurant has about eight burners total and a line snaking around the block, one can only wonder how they’re cooking all of this exquisite food, let alone drinks. 

But Rico and his partner and owner Sara Mardanbigi are doing it, and doing it well. In fact, they insist that having a non-alcoholic pairing for their new tasting menu concept, Flor Xakali, was a top priority.

“We wanted to think of the non-alcoholic list like our food menu,” Mardanbigi says. “You generally find sad substitutes for vegetarian options, so we wanted a non-alcoholic menu that was beyond just non-alcoholic wines that can incorporate things we ferment and make in-house, too.”

While the menu is changing weekly, Rico and his team are currently serving a non-alcoholic riesling, a riff on a delicious agua fresca, a housemade pineapple fermented tepache, and a “Ghiajillo” — horchata plus Ghia — their spin on a non-alcoholic Carajillo.

And maybe it’s just me, but all of these drinks certainly sound better, if not more creative and interesting, than any wine pairing I’ve ever been a part of. In fact, it’s not even close.