Zero to hero
Do you still enjoy a drink? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. About 80% of us consume alcohol during the year, a figure that has wobbled only a couple of percentage points either way for several years now.
Do you sometimes overdo it? Plenty of company there, too. About 20% of us – more than 800,000 people – drink dangerously, and the cost of alcohol-related harm is estimated at around $7.85 billion a year. Alcohol excise tax earned $1.2 billion last year, which means if you don’t drink, you are paying for most of the damage done by those who do.
Back in the 70s and 80s, when we first started to fret about the road toll, an advertising campaign for a non-alcoholic “whisky” called Claytons was so successful the name still survives Down Under as a synonym for something ersatz or not genuine. But Claytons disappeared from Aotearoa many decades ago. Until recently, if you didn’t want to drink alcohol on a night out, your choices were water, juice, soft drinks or the dreaded lemon, lime and bitters.
Most so-called substitutes – Claytons was no exception – tasted like they had recently been inside a weasel. The sober-curious or those who identified as non-winery struggled to find acceptable low-alcohol or non-alcoholic drinks that let them feel grown up.
There was a tipping point around the time British “distilled non-alcoholic spirits” maker Seedlip was founded in 2014. Since then, the number of spirit-adjacent offerings on the market has expanded rapidly. Here, the alcohol-averse can also choose potions from the Australian brand Lyre’s, as well as
