Drinkers scanning the cocktail menu at buzzed-about Bowery newcomer Pearl & Ash will find all they’ve come to expect in the age of the cocktail renaissance: artful compositions, refined ingredients such as celery-lime juice and coldbrew-coffee-infused Punt e Mes.
What they won’t find is actual booze. The strongest ingredient in a drink called the Area Code is the wine-based digestif Cardamaro; the Murder on the Ebullient Express is built on white port.
While the absence of whiskeys, gins and vodkas on the menu might come as a rude surprise to any patron looking to take the edge off the workday before appetizers arrive, it’s an increasingly common sight. Low-alcohol cocktails built around liqueurs and aromatized wines — whose alcohol contents run from about 60 proof to well under half that strength — are gaining favor at bars and restaurants all over the city.
“There’s been a big rise in low-proof cocktails — bars are now doing at least one on their menus,” says Max Messier, a Brooklyn-based mixologist and a vermouth maker.
At the Tippler bar under the Chelsea Market, that would be the Top Cat, which blends fresh strawberries, lemon and orange soda with the bitter Italian digestif Averna.
“We sell tons of that drink, because it has some complex flavors, but it’s easy to drink,” says Tad Carducci, the bar’s co-founder/mixologist and half of the Tippling Brothers bar consultancy. “There’s significantly less alcohol.”
While to many cocktail drinkers the “less alcohol” part would be a deal-breaker rather than a selling point, mixologists say there’s a growing number of customers who want to order something that doesn’t double as an anesthetic. That’s especially true for those drawn toward mixed drinks by the cocktail resurgence, but who are more accustomed to the booze content in a zinfandel than a Zombie.
Such customers are a good part of what led Ehren Ashkenazi, who manages the beverage program at the Modern, to add a popular “aperitif” section to the cocktail menu last May, featuring low-impact drinks like the Tres Jolie, made with dry vermouth, Cointreau and the aperitif wine Dubonnet Rouge.
“It creates another layer of the cocktail program that’s more of a gateway,” he says. “They’re able to have a drink before dinner and then move on to wine and not feel like they’re getting hit in the face.”
As trend-drivers go, it doesn’t hurt that low-alcohol drinks stand to boost a bar or restaurant’s bottom line. While aperitif cocktails are often a couple of dollars cheaper than high-octane drinks, a customer who orders three vermouth cocktails instead of two Sidecars is running up a higher tab.
“They’re a big boon” to restaurant and bar owners, notes Messier, “because people generally drink them faster.”
Some restaurants are embracing low-booze cocktails for another reason: Without liquor licenses, they don’t have a choice. That’s the case at Pearl & Ash, which opened in February with a menu of low-proof drinks designed by mixology maven Eben Klemm.
Not everyone embraces the notion of a low-proof cocktail — just ask Klemm himself.
“To be quite honest, if I were to see a cocktail menu that only had low-alcohol spirits, my initial tendency would have been to walk out and find one of the 3 million bars that actually has hard alcohol,” he says.
But he’s come to see the virtues of low-proof drinks, noting that they’re better suited than traditional cocktails to be part of “a fine and subtle and well-balanced food experience.”
Barkeeps cite another big factor in the low-impact trend: booming interest in and availability of vermouths, liqueurs, aperitifs and digestifs, from Pimm’s Cup to Italian amaro. Once-rare orders for the latter — and other things “your old Italian grandfather would have drunk” — have spiked, says Messier.
Not that they’re likely to put booze-bombs out of business any time soon. The most ordered drink at Carducci’s bar is still the Crippler, a high-proof wrecking ball fueled by mezcal, rye whiskey and two overproof rums.
“It’s not that there aren’t still a lot of people going out and getting ripped all the time,” he says.
Popular spirits with less punch
Aperol: Orange-red and bitter-orange-flavored, this bright Italian liqueur has spiked in US sales in recent years. At a mere 11 percent alcohol, it’s decidedly low impact; in Italy it’s often drunk in a spritzer made with Prosecco and soda.
Averna: A type of amaro, this bitter digestif is made in Sicily according to a 145-year-old recipe incorporating herbs, roots and citrus rinds. Smooth and rich, it weighs in at 64 proof.
Lillet: Made in Bordeaux since 1872, this bittersweet aperitif is a blend of wine and citrus liqueurs, aged in oak casks. A cafe favorite in France, it comes in blanc, rouge and, beginning last year, rosé versions — all 34 proof.