New No and Low Drinks for November

Sober October may be past but with lockdown and the festive season coming up, many of us are vowing to take it a little easier on the booze this time. Here are some great, new products that feel like a treat and in some cases, can actually do you good. 

SPIRITS ALTERNATIVES

Caleño Dark & Spicy

Fresh to the market is Caleño’s new baby: Dark & Spicy! We adored the original, with its infusions of inca berry and juniper - a perfect gin alternative perhaps, though very much of its own style. This new version does the same for lovers of dark rum. Think of riper, tropical notes of pineapple with a kick of ginger, vanilla pod and a twist of lime. They’ve nailed it!

Find it for £18 for 50cl at calendodrinks.com (with discounts for multiple bottle buys!) 

Warner’s Juniper Double Dry Gin - 0% ABV

Hats off to Warner’s for being the first English gin brand to bring out its own 0% ABV versions. Using 100% natural botanicals and 90% of their ingredients being sourced from their farm in Northamptonshire, its herbaceous and powerful with a kick or warm spice on the finish. Also try their Pink Berry version, which is packed full of red fruit and spice. 

Find it at 31Dover.com for £17.95 for 50cl

BUBBLES

Fortnum’s Sparkling Tea - 0.0% ABV

We talked about how much we loved Fornum’s sparkling rosé tea here and in our podcast, so it was great to get to try the white! Certified organic and a blend of eight teas, this version is subtle, fragrant and elegant with both tropical notes and more darjeeling-like tea flavours. Totally refreshing! It’s worth noting that this sparkling tea contains 150mg of caffeine per litre.

Find it at Fortnumandmason.com for £16.95

Good One, Craft Hard Soda - 4 % ABV

Hot on the trails of the hard seltzer trend, Good One is an English hard soda company with three, genuinely good flavours that taste natural, where so many others feel synthetic. Its sleek, vibrant, matte packaging makes it feel like a step up from a regular soda too. We particularly loved the raspberry, lime and basil but the cloudy grapefruit and thyme and the lime and cucumber are darn good too. Gluten free, vegan, lo carb and low calorie, there’s a lot to love about these.

Find mixed packs of 12 for £33 at haveagoodone.co.uk

BEER

Small Beer  - under 2.8% ABV

The Small Beer Brew Co. are going strength to strength with their low alcohol beers that are good for you (being under 3% and isotonic) and good for the planet. Given what could end up being a marathon of drinking over the next two months, wouldn't it be good to have a stash of these lower alcohol beers in the fridge? For a limited time from now until 20th Dec, they are also offering a 6-month gift subscription, compete with brilliant videos and a gift poach for under the tree!

Find the beers and the subscription pack at theoriginalsmallbeer.com

Roe & Co: Irish whiskey at its best

Roe and Co Irish Whiskey - Birth of a brand

There are a plethora of new distilleries either newly opened or opening soon in Ireland. Irish whiskey is supposed to be the next big thing. Having had a terrible time from the mid 1960’s until the opening of the Cooley distillery in the late 1980’s Irish whiskey is now having a resurgence. This resurgence is no flash in the pan. Diageo, the worlds largest spirits company has joined the fray with their own brand of Irish whiskey and a brand new distillery to supply it. Roe and Co is the brand and is built very near the old distillery site of the Thomas Street Distillery, run by the Roe family. It was one of the largest distilleries in Britain at the time with a capacity of over two million litres a year. The distillery closed in 1926.

The new Roe and Co distillery is quite different. The maximum capacity is around 500,000 litres, and there is a small team. Head distiller Lora Hemy, with distiller Fiona Sheridan run the operational side of things with support from Hayley Milner, the global marketing manager and Alan Mulvihill the European brand ambassador. At the moment the whiskey is made from bought in stocks of Irish whiskey, which is then blended, but the plan is to use the whiskey from the distillery in the long term. 

In 2019 a visitor centre opened, and it is a visitor centre with a difference. For a start you can take pictures in the still house! With a walkway high above, but open to the stills, it is safe to take pictures and gives one a bird’s eye view of all the equipment and a clear view on the distillation process. There is also lots of fun making cocktails in a dedicated cocktail class area and a sensory room too. All in all, a modern entertaining and informative experience.

The liquid is very good too. The blending is as one would expect from the blenders of the worlds largest selling blended whisky; it is extemporary. I’ve tasted the whiskey from first release to the press in 2017, through to a bottle last weekend for world whiskey day, and the consistency is impeccable. The casks used are predominantly bourbon casks, so there is a lot of sweetness, and power, as the abv is set at 45%. It is incredibly smooth and the 45% doesn’t show as being hot at all. With all this expertise in the bottle it’s a surprise the price is only around £30.  This whiskey has joined my go to Johnnie Walker Black label as a whiskey to go to when I’m not sure what I want, and I frequently find that is it Roe and Co I actually want.  And if you’d like to try it too you can buy it below.

ABV: 45%
Size: 700ml
Buy it now for £29.49

With Irish whiskey on the rise how about reading about Waterford Distillery? A new distillery on the south coast of Ireland