Come March every year, nothing about New York City feels charming to me—even the slightest train delay (looking at you, Q) sets me off, and my favorite wool coat suddenly feels like a straitjacket. This year, I happily traded that melancholy for the sandy beaches of Palm Heights, an iconic hotel on Grand Cayman. But unlike my previous early spring escapes from the city, this trip happened just weeks after finding out I was pregnant. So at the hotel restaurant, when I asked our server if I could order just the non-alcoholic bubbly in a zero-proof cocktail, he seemed confused.
“We have many drinks without alcohol,” he said, gesturing to the menu in front of me, which had six thoughtfully crafted options using various fruit juices, extracts, ginger beer, and tonic. After a bit of back and forth, my booze-free bubbly arrived, and upon signing the check, I suggested that the staff consider adding the zero-proof sparkler to the menu by itself. It was crisp, dry, and paired perfectly with my plateful of shoestring fries and Caesar salad. Rather than detracting from the carefully crafted mocktail list (as my server perhaps feared it might), the addition of the non-alcoholic wine would simply have made the menu more inclusive.
Mocktails are increasingly offered at restaurants in the US, at least at the ones worth their salt. But the options for someone who can’t or doesn’t drink, but just really craves a glass of wine—and isn’t a big cocktail drinker to begin with—are surprisingly still limited.
At Gramercy Tavern, non-alcoholic wines have become so popular that the staff are increasing their supply.
Maura McEvoy/Gramercy Tavern
Thankfully, that seems like it is changing. A few spots in New York City are offering more nonalcoholic wine options (often abbreviated as “N/A wines”) both by the glass and bottle. At the iconic Gramercy Tavern, by-the-glass booze-free wines have become so popular that beverage director Randall Restaino recently added them to his usual bi-weekly bar ordering sheet. “We now restock these wines weekly,” Restaino tells Condé Nast Traveler. “I remember eight years ago, at Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, we had one guest per service asking for this. Fast forward and now at Gramercy Tavern, the N/A options are among the top ten wines sold nightly.”
I visited Gramercy Tavern recently on a quiet weekday, and I nosily clocked another bar patron, who seemed to be there for post-work drinks, asking for Dr. Steinbock Fischer’s Riesling Zero from Martin Hofstatter, who makes Riesling and Pinot Noir in Italy’s Alto Adige region. “He crafts real wine grapes from real terroir and then dealcoholizes them,” Restaino says. “It’s a real pleasure when you drink a wine with no alcohol and the flavor profile really stays the same as if it were a traditionally made wine.”