Non-alcoholic Christmas drinks that feel like a celebration
Every Christmas table has someone who is not drinking: the driver, someone pregnant, someone on medication, someone who just does not fancy it. Handing them a warm lemonade is a small unkindness that is very easy to fix.
These five take the same effort as a real drink, which is the entire point.
1. Christmas punch for a crowd
Makes about 12 glasses.
- 1.5L cranberry juice
- 500ml apple juice
- 1L sparkling water, added at the last minute
- Juice of 2 limes
- Dried orange slices and dried strawberry slices floating on top
Mix the juices in advance and keep them cold. Add the sparkling water as people arrive, not before, or it will be flat by the time anyone drinks it.
2. Faux-jito
- Mint, lime juice, sugar syrup, soda
- Strawberry mint rim sugar
Rim the glass first while it is dry. The sugar rim is what makes this taste like a cocktail rather than a lime soda.
3. Grown-up ginger
- Good ginger beer, the spicy kind
- A squeeze of lime
- A dash of bitters, if you are comfortable with the trace alcohol
- Dried lime slice
Served in a proper glass over big ice, this passes for a dark and stormy and nobody asks questions.
4. Summer berry spritz
- 100ml pomegranate or cranberry juice
- Sparkling water or alcohol-free sparkling wine
- A pinch of edible florets
The petals float and travel with the bubbles, which is the detail people comment on.
5. Citrus cooler with a chilli salt rim
- Equal parts orange juice and soda water
- A good squeeze of lime
- Chilli citrus salt on the rim
Savoury and slightly spicy, which is what most alcohol-free drinks lack. This is the one that converts sceptics.
Making it feel like a drink, not a consolation
- Use the same glassware as everyone else. A tumbler of juice is a consolation prize. The same juice in a coupe is a drink.
- Rim the glass. Ten seconds, and it changes how the whole thing reads.
- Garnish properly. A dried citrus slice or petals, not a sad wedge of orange.
- Offer it, do not wait to be asked. Most people who are not drinking will accept whatever is handed over rather than make a fuss.
One rim dust and one pouch of dried citrus covers everything on this page, and they work just as well for the drinkers. Handmade in the Waikato, shipped New Zealand wide.