Non-alcoholic alcoholic beverages that are proud of what they are

Blurred Vines Spark Alt Wine (£16, thewinesociety.com) Since writing last week's column about the steady improvement in the quality of non-alcoholic wine, I've I was, as I always am at this time of year, bombarded with statistics on the rise of abstinence and what marketers have come to call “sober curiosity.” According to Alcohol Concern, around 9 million people are taking a month off for Dry January this year. And for the most part, they (at the time of this writing, we) are just as likely to seek out interesting non-alcoholic beverages on their own as distorted versions of their favorite booze. In my opinion, the examples of the former are in any case the most interesting of the new "no-lo" drinks that have emerged over the past couple of years. Drinks such as Blurred Vines Red Spark and White Sharp, two expertly fermented blends of tea and a range of botanicals, are wonderfully complex and satisfying drinks that, despite their name, are not so much wine as their own delicious novelty. .

Feragia & Tonic (£30, 12 x 25cl cans, feragia.com) The two Blurred Vines concoctions play with spice (chilli) and bitterness, as well as the tannins in the tea, to create the sort of complexity in mouthfeel and flavor that is what I miss most when I abstain from alcohol. There's a similar interaction at work in another of my favorite new no-lo drinks, Scottish brand Feragia, a fabulously complex 0% alcohol spirit from Fife distilled from cayenne pepper, ancho kaffir, apple and hibiscus, among other things, which works brilliantly. , both (£26.35, for a 70cl bottle, feragia.com) or with tonic or ginger ale in pre-mixed cans. My fellow winemaker Matthew Jukes' foray into non-alcoholic wines, Jukes Sparkling Pinot Noir (£10.25, 4 x 25cl cans, Waitrose), meanwhile, takes a different route: macerating the skins of pinot grapes black in cider vinegar. The results are an acquired taste: I had to overcome my skepticism about drinking vinegar, but by the second can, I was craving the vinegary kick and reveling in the red fruit pinot noir notes.

You + I Ginger Kombucha (£2.95, 30cl bottle, kombuchawarehouse.com) Tea is the basis of a lot of good and interesting things in the no-lo world . There is a whole world of estate tea that I intend to explore in much greater depth this year - tea culture, with its focus on terroir and varieties, having so much in common with wine . For Dry January, however, I found cold tea drinks to be the most versatile alternatives for filling the wine-shaped hole in an evening meal. That could mean sparkling tea blends, such as the racy and slightly grassy (chamomile) Copenhagen Sparkling Tea Blue (£16.95, spiritskiosk.com) or the subtly floral and wonderfully dry Jing Jasmine Pearls Sparkling Tea (£21, jingea .com). More often it means kombucha, the tangy, non-alcoholic infusion of fermented tea, as made by modern British masters of the form such as You + I (I particularly like the tang of ginger and the lemony clarity and depths tasty lime). and Sea Salt, £2.95, thewinesociety.com) and LA Brewery (the Berry Flavored Sparling English Blush Kombucha, £9.50, 75cl, thewinesociety.com).

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