_edited.png){kind=small}
by Racquel Foran
MOCK
verb
tease or laugh at in a scornful or contemptuous manner.
adjective
not authentic or real, but without the intention to deceive
Dry January is upon us and with this comes the influx of news articles and clips, blogs, and podcasts about the growing non-alcoholic (NA) industry. And more often than not the term “mocktail” is used to describe NA beverages. We also frequently hear terms like “near beer,” and “fake wine.”
Every time I hear one of these terms, I bristle. I know am going to ruffle some feathers with this blog, but at Bevees we are not fans of any of these descriptors.
I opened this blog with the definition of ‘mock’. As you can read, it is not a particularly nice word. No one wants to be teased or laughed at in a scornful way, and no one likes to be considered inauthentic. As purveyors of alcohol-free adult oriented beverages, we don’t appreciate the products we sell being defined this way either. But more importantly, it is simply not an accurate descriptor.
As I recently commented to one social media post that claimed all non-alcoholic wine is “a bad fake of the real thing,” it is not alcohol that makes a wine, it is the grapes and the wine-making process that makes wine, wine. The same thing can be said for non-alcoholic beer. Alcohol does not make anything “real.” In fact, I would argue that alcohol makes people and situations fake. But I digress.
Alcohol-free cocktails are also not fake. The dictionary defines a cocktail as, “an alcoholic drink consisting of a spirit or several spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as fruit juice, lemonade, or cream.”
They do specify alcohol as an ingredient, but we believe that this term can and should be replaced with “spirt’; this is what differentiates cocktails from a regular beverage. It is the layering of spirits with other ingredients to make a new complex beverage that makes a cocktail. And at Bevees that is exactly what we do, except our spirits do not have alcohol.
At Bevees our AF cocktail menu includes all the classics – martinis, old fashions, spritzes, ‘no’ gronis, cos ‘nos’, margaritas, as well as dozens of our own creations. Each of these drinks combines high quality non-alcoholic spirits with fresh juices, craft sodas, natural syrups, and non-alcoholic bitters to build what Stanford University coined as EANABS (equally attractive non-alcoholic beverages).
For a long time, beverages without alcohol were referred to as “virgin drinks.” There is, however, a huge difference between a virgin drink and an AF cocktail. All cocktails, whether made with or without alcohol are based on precise recipes. A Caesar for example must contain all the ingredients – vodka, Clamato, Worchestershire, Tabasco, celery salt rim- to make it a Caesar. In a virgin Caesar a key ingredient of the recipe, vodka, is removed and you get what is left over. So, in essence, the recipe is missing something, so the drink does not taste as it should.
We cannot simply leave out ingredients and expect to get the same results. But that is what is done with virgin drinks and mocktails. Virgin margaritas, pina coladas, daiquiris, and Bellinis are all the same. They remove an ingredient and give you what is leftover, which is usually too sweet without the booze to balance it out.
By comparison, an AF cocktail is not missing anything. The recipes are built with non-alcoholic spirits and wines in mind. For example, our AF Vancouver Island Iced Tea, much like its alcohol counterpart, has 7 different ingredients. It tastes like a Long Island Iced Tea, not a plain iced tea.
We encourage people to visit our non-alcoholic bar and try one of our AF cocktails. We think you will be pleasantly surprised by how complex and delicious they are. And once you try one, we are confident you will agree they are nothing to mock, and there is nothing fake about them.
Cheers!
Kommentare