The sober and sober-curious are no strangers to the relationship between alcohol and obscure holidays. Whether the Spring season found you up at dawn with green beer on St. Patrick’s Day, or knee deep in a bottomless margarita on Cinco De Mayo, there was a time you may have thought the deliciousness of the celebration was over forever. I am here today to tell you that you can be sober and not boring. While St. Patrick’s Day gave us Guinness 0.0 and a selection of non-alcoholic Irish Red Ales, Cinco de Mayo proves to offer up even more.
First up, in the NA beer category, we have a classic beach beer and a new brew to tickle your tongue nodules. The classic beach beer, Corona, is the latest in a long line of macrobrews that have come out with their own NA beer. Alongside the Guinness, there’s Stella NA, Heineken 0, Bud Zero, and now Corona NA. If Cinco de Mayo is simply an excuse for you to make killer tacos and drink from a lime-licked beer bottle, then this is the beach brew for you.
The folks at Corona know what they’re doing, and they show it by capturing the exact same flavor that you’re used to, like it or not. I’ll admit that even I was more than happy to refer to Corona as piss water when I was drinking, but you better believe I was happy to impregnate that thick, clear bottle with a lime and pound it back on May 5th. So, whether you are looking to capture that classic taste that accompanies tacos so well, or you just want an alternative to your classic O’Doul’s, this is a delicious treat for you and me.
Next up, our new brew comes to us from a familiar friend: Untitled Art. Untitled Art is one of the leaders in NA beers, both in flavor and variety, and they have come to hit it out of the park once again with their Cerveza Con Limon. This classic Mexican Cerveza has already been handled with a hint of citrus to accent the classic crispiness of the beer. As far as checking all the boxes you want out of a pre-summer Cinco celebration ale, this does the trick. Refreshing? Check. Crisp? Check. Light? Check. Flavorful and easy to drink? You better believe it!
These are just two of multiple NA options available in the NA beer category. Many breweries are continuing to release their Cerveza-style beers around this time, and you can find some gems in the NA aisle, on your favorite direct-to-consumer website, or at your local NA bottle shop. We’ve seen iterations from Athletic Brewing, Bravus Brewing, and the now-defunct Two Roots, to name a few. This trend of making small batches to match seasonal demand is only continuing to grow, and we are here for it!
Our next category is mocktails, in the form of margaritas! Admittedly, I am not the best judge of a margarita, and the best NA one I have found has pickle juice! That said, when Bravus founder Phillip Brandes released his long-rumored La Planta agave liquor, I was only thinking of one thing, and it came with a salted rim and a lime. Keeping our NA beverages all-inclusive and digging into the proverbial NA liquor cabinet, I brought along some other friends: Ritual and All the Bitter. To get started, let’s introduce each of our ingredients.
First, we have La Planta and Ritual for tequila replacements. Ritual has been around for a while now and relies on the burn from spicy peppers to mimic the alcohol burn you would expect from a hard liquor. This has hit people very differently, depending on your palette. Above all else, Ritual also seems to rely on being a replacement to be mixed with other things. This is how most NA liquors are marketed. La Planta, however, claims to be good sipped or mixed. I was skeptical, but excited at the prospect, so before we start mixing margaritas, we will dive into a sexy sipping sensuality and try this claim out.
Pouring La Planta over ice and bringing it in for a sniff test, I was wildly surprised. This was tequila. All the scents that brought back so many terrible memories were floating at the top of the glass. No substitute has captured that aroma quite like La Planta. Unfortunately, once I tasted it, there was little more than a watered-down tequila flavor. I immediately credit this to the melting ice and dump it to try La Planta straight up. The complexity of how the liquid coats the glass is mesmerizing and brings back other memories of trying to figure out the science of alcohol as a substance. After I shake off my distraction, I bring the bottom up and throw back some sexy sips. As I swish and swallow, the best way I can spit out a description in my befuddled state is this: La Planta tastes like tequila if you remove the alcohol. Knowing what I know about Bravus and their brewing techniques sounds right. Now let’s mix it up!
For this Cinco de Mayo trial, we will make two different margaritas. The first one will be made with La Planta, and the second one with Ritual. Each will consist of tequila replacement, lime juice, All the Bitters Orange, and simple syrup.
A quick explanation of All the Bitters: A margarita is typically made with Cointreau, Grand Marnier, or Triple Sec—some sort of orange liquor. All the Bitters, a non-alcoholic bitters company, makes delightful and award-winning orange bitters. Because there is a lack of sugar compared to the orange liquors mentioned, I added a dash of simple syrup to help bring out the sweetness of the orange.
With each margarita made and stirred (where’s my martini shaker?), I am ready to taste it. First up is the Ritual margarita, and it’s true what they say: first is the worst. Something about the overpowering pepper flavor even kills me in this overly limey NA marg. I may have been holding onto this Ritual bottle too long, but I still didn’t like the flavors fighting each other. The tune changes, though, with the next messy mocktail. La Planta’s margarita hits the spot. Again, like its competition, the lime is a bit much, and I will cut down the amount next time, but with another dash of the orange bitters, this is a perfect combination. With the lack of alcohol, it’s more reminiscent of a bottomless margarita that tastes weaker than the top-shelf ones, but in that category, it hits the nail on the head.
So, as the South of the Border holiday approaches, find a fun option to celebrate and remember that sober does not mean flavorless and lame. Sober can mean whatever you want it to, as long as you mean it. Gracias! Happy Cinco de Mayo!
This post was originally published on May 1, 2024.
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