All The Bitter, Lyre's Spirit Co, Roots Divino, So Jennie Paris Aperitivo Hour Kit (1 × 750 mL + 2 × 700 mL + 1 × 60 mL)

Mark Livings and Carl Hartmann founded Lyre's in Australia in 2019, setting out to build a range that echoed the classic spirits rather than inventing new flavors.

The name is the method. The lyrebird imitates whatever it hears — other birds, a camera shutter, a chainsaw — and the range is built the same way, each bottle answering a spirit a bartender already knows how to use. That is why the labels say Gin Alternative and Dark Rum Alternative rather than inventing a word for what is in them.

The bottles carry the Social Animals, a cast of characters drawn one to a liquid. The range now runs from the spirits through a sparkling Classico to canned cocktails, and the company sells in more than sixty countries.

Manos and Nikolas Smyrlakis were building careers elsewhere when Greece's crisis sent their generation abroad. They went the other way — home, and into the family trade. Their relatives own Callicounis Distilleries in Kalamata, working since 1850 and the oldest still running in the country, and in 2013 the brothers started Roots there, reviving old Greek liqueur recipes with ingredients gathered from around the country.

Roots Divino came out of that. The name is the argument twice over: back to their roots, and di vino — of wine. Vermouth is a wine-based drink, and almost every alcohol-free version on the market is built on water and flavoring instead. Roots Divino starts from Greek wine, which is what lets it behave like vermouth in a glass rather than approximate one.

Production moved to Lesbos in 2019 as demand grew. The reference point for the drink itself is older than vermouth: the wormwood wine described by Hippocrates, from the neighboring island of Kos.

In 2010, Jennie Kergoat-Ruelland was planning a royal wedding in Abu Dhabi. The event was as lavish as any she had run, and when the moment came to raise a glass the guests who did not drink were toasting with fruit juice. She set out to make something that belonged on the same table.

So Jennie Paris is made in France from selected grape musts, lightly carbonated and never fermented — 0.0% alcohol, and Halal certified. The butterfly on the bottle is screen-printed in 21-carat gold, which is the part people remember. It is poured at the Four Seasons George V, at Harrods, and in Qatar Airways First and Business class.

Carly and Ian Blessing met working as sommeliers at The French Laundry in the Napa Valley. They married, had two sons eighteen months apart, and stopped drinking. When the pandemic closed restaurants, Ian was taking real-estate classes at home and finding he did not care about any of it.

What he did care about was what was appearing on the non-alcoholic shelf. Bitters were the gap — the ones that existed were alcohol-based, so a bitters-and-soda or an Old Fashioned stayed out of reach. The first batches were made in mason jars in their kitchen.

They still make it by hand in small batches in Chico, California, from raw dried herbs that are organic or wild-foraged, with no flavorings of any kind. Emails and messages still go straight to the two of them.