Alcohol-Free Bartending, According to Jim Meehan

The renowned bartender, journalist, and author of The PDT Cocktail Book and Meehan's Bartender Manual has some opinions!

Jim Meehan, author of Meehan’s Bartender Manual and The PDT Cocktail Book, was my first-ever boss out of college. He is a legend in the bartending world and I had the privilege of being his assistant on Food & Wine’s 2007 cocktail guide, a book of drink recipes the magazine used to publish annually. He’s remained a supporter and a friend ever since, and he even wrote a blurb for the cover of my book.

What did it say, you ask? ALLOW ME:

“Like pulling the tablecloth (alcohol) out from under a fully set table without knocking everything over, Julia Bainbridge resets our expectations for what a ‘drink’ can mean from now on.”

[Bainbridge beams with pride and delight.]

I appreciate Meehan's enthusiasm for alcohol-free cocktails, admire his skill as a bartender, and enjoy our philosophical conversations about drinking, so I invited him to have one of those conversations with me here. Find an edited and condensed version of it below.

What do you think about using the term "spirits" in the alcohol-free beverage realm?

I think a lot of this boils down to whether we're going to define things by what they are, and be comfortable with what they are, or whether we’re going to define things by what they're not.

I'd like us to start not thinking of these products as re-engineered versions of gin or whiskey or tequila. Is it a distillate? Then maybe we should use that word to describe it. I know “distillate” isn't a sexy term, but when you define everything against alcohol, it's a reductive way of thinking.

I also think you create an inferiority complex when you define something by what it's not, and you close off an opportunity for love and appreciation. It's kind of toxic! A healthier and more holistic way, in my opinion, of developing this category is to think of what these liquids can deliver independently of their relationships with alcohol.

But you have no problem with calling Einbecker, for example, "nonalcoholic beer."

The Einbecker I drink really does taste like a nice crisp lager. The Athletic I drink really does taste like an IPA. It's very similar to a great beer-drinking experience, it just doesn't have the alcohol. If you could create a whiskey that would allow me to pour it on the rocks or make a Manhattan with it in the same way that I would use a bonded rye whiskey, then I would be open to discussing that as a nonalcoholic whiskey. In other words if, as a bartender, I don't have to make drastic accommodations in the knowledge that I've acquired mixing spirits, we can call it spirit-free whiskey.

I understand what Seedlip is, but it doesn't work the way gin does.

Right. Can you break that down?

The viscosity, the mouthfeel of gin is much richer, oilier, and heavier than Seedlip, which has a watery quality to it. Because of the concentration of gin, especially gin at 47% alcohol like Tanqueray, you can taste even three quarters of an ounce of it in the Last Word, for example. If I mix three quarters of an ounce of Seedlip with passion fruit juice or grapefruit juice or something really flavorful, I'm going to struggle to taste the Seedlip. I find that I have to mix at least two ounces of it, and because it has no sweeteners or stabilizers—which, I'm glad it doesn't, but—I have to find other things for texture and body. That’s a key difference. I can’t necessarily bring my knowledge as a cocktail bartender to make delicious drinks with it; I have to really play around to get to something that I'm happy with.

So, if we're going to think of this very valid category of so-called nonalcoholic spirits that are gin-adjacent, whiskey-adjacent, tequila-adjacent in the same way that I think comfortably of nonalcoholic beer, then I would like them to deliver. I would like to be able to use them interchangeably with gin or whiskey or tequila.

Yeah. I'm into defining these products on their own terms, I just don't know how possible that is, because one, we're already here—we've started introducing the term "spirit" and calling them "alcohol-free spirits"—and two, I don't know that there would be any other easy way to educate people about how to use them and where they belong.

I'm not saying that people should not do this, because, like you said, that train has left the station. And in the Aviary's cocktail book, the team created a nonalcoholic tequila and a nonalcoholic whiskey and I thought it was brilliant. But this approach, in my opinion, should not become dominant.

There's so much work involved in making those Aviary drinks at home! A number of the drinks in my book, too, are labor-intensive, and I remember you advising me not to feel defensive about that…

There's a push and pull between our desire to eat well and how much time we allocate in our days to cook. Americans have begun to embrace the idea that the ingredients matter. I think it's pretty broadly understood that the quality of the ingredients are essential to the outcome and quality of the food, and so you should potentially look for organic or fair trade or go to the farmers market. But I think the corner that everyone still seems to be trying to cut is, "Well, maybe I can have someone else prepare it for me and eat it in a restaurant, or maybe there's some fast delivery service where it can be delivered to me or I can get it half-prepared and I can just finish it in my kitchen." I don't believe, especially in our overworked American workforce, that enough people are investing the time and energy and resources into embracing the cooking part of it. When I say cooking, I mean drink preparations as well.

The thesis I landed upon with this new book I'm working on, which I haven't actually been able to articulate completely yet, is that the act of cooking transforms you as much as it transforms the ingredients. It sounds really simple and it's not surprising—it's not some sort of conclusion that I have developed uniquely—but it relates to this space. I wonder what your experience has been after writing your book: Are people taking the time and energy to make these drinks? If they are, are they burned out or are they totally cool with it?

Most have been making the easier recipes. A healthy handful of people took on the complicated ones—with much success, actually. One woman in Canada is working her way through every recipe in the book! This is just what I see on social media, of course, or what readers are reporting to me. I looked at one critical Amazon review and couldn't look again.

Finding the ingredients is a bit of a wild goose chase and it is expensive and it does take time, but it gives you something to talk about. Maybe you're looking for a product and the store doesn't have it, but they have another one, and through the process of sourcing and thinking about the best way to make the recipe, you end up being in communication with so many people.

You drink less today than you used to, correct?

Yes, I drink very little now because my liver enzymes were elevated for a number of years. So really, I think what's more important than what we call these drinks is that there is a legitimate space for them.

I rarely drink because of my physical health. You might not drink alcohol because you know that could lead to more extensive abuse based on family alcoholism. For others, it could be that someone is taking an antidepressant and alcohol will create an adverse effect, or someone's pregnant but they're not ready to tell people yet. And there's so much anxiety and shame around it! There's the concern of revealing something that you might not want colleagues or social acquaintances to know about you. People consume alcohol in convivial gatherings and it fosters more conviviality (sometimes too much!), and people who aren't drinking it can feel excluded from these rites of gathering. Much of my interest in these nonalcoholic drinks comes from wanting to decrease the challenges that those people face when they gather. These drinks must exist, in my opinion.

I get this question often: Why not just go to a café if you don't want to drink?

The coffee house used to be a place where, like bars, you would go to catch up with people, but now it's a place where people go with laptops. If you and I were to go to a coffee shop and try to have this conversation, a bunch of people on their computers would look up and be like, "What the fuck are you doing?" Our voices would carry across the room because no one else would be talking. Then, if we went to a restaurant just to have a drink, the staff would be annoyed because we didn't order food. There are logistical reasons why bars are the spaces where this should be happening.

Let's talk about intoxication, pleasure, and how we evaluate the experiences of drinking a nonalcoholic cocktail.

For me, the main difference between a delicious nonalcoholic drink and a delicious alcoholic drink is that the alcoholic drink is intoxicating. I like being a little intoxicated. I don't allow for it much anymore, but, to me, that's a wall... We try to compare the two experiences, but one doesn't have an intoxicating effect, so we have to use different metrics to evaluate these two pleasures.

It's true that we tiptoe around intoxication…

In my opinion, if we're going to have an open discussion about the costs and benefits of nonalcoholic drinks versus alcoholic drinks, intoxication has to be considered.

Yes. And what else should we consider?

How does it deliver, as a drinking experience? From a flavor standpoint, a nonalcoholic drink should not offer diminishing returns compared to alcoholic options. Where does it live on the menu? How is it communicated about? What does it cost vis-a-vis the alcoholic cocktails? What kind of pleasure does it bring?

But overall, the most important thing to me is that this is not a stigmatized drink category.

I wrote some stuff! Here’s a profile of Han Suk Cho, published in Plate Magazine, and over at the Kitchn are the CliffsNotes for better understanding nonalcoholic wine.

In other housekeeping news, I start graduate school in…days. In fact, I’m in orientation right now. So that I can get a sense of my course load and adjust to my new schedule, I’m taking September off from Good Drinks, but it will be worth the wait: I’ll be back in October with intel on cannabis-infused beverages.

Until then, be well <3 And let me know what you like and don’t like about this newsletter, won’t you? I’m here to serve you, and there are improvements to be made, no doubt.