A Booze-Free Highball Recipe for the Holidays
Image: Michael Novak
The winter holiday season can be an especially booze-soaked time of the year, with party punches and champagne-filled New Year’s Eve dinners. While it’s celebratory for some, it can be challenging to those abstaining or limiting their alcohol intake.
Ariel Dunitz-Johnson, founder of the alcohol-free bar and bottle shop Ever AFter, created this recipe, Shorter Days, to celebrate the cooler, darker seasons in the Pacific Northwest. A highball made with local alcohol-free spirits and mixers, Shorter Days is a great back-pocket recipe to pre-batch for party punch bowls or keep on-hand as your own holiday sipper.
Dunitz-Johnson understands the challenges of maintaining sobriety in a culture where bars are primary third places and created Ever AFter, which is currently in residence at the cheery flower shop Colibri, as an alternative. Today, packaged alcohol-free spirits, mixers, and canned drinks fill their space, but Dunitz-Johnson’s goal is to grow the business into a stand-alone bar, bottle shop, and event space.
This recipe calls for Portland Syrups’ ginger syrup, but if you’d like to make your own, Dunitz-Johnson recommends simmering equal parts water, sugar, and chopped and peeled ginger in a saucepan for 15 minutes, then straining.
Shorter Days
Ingredients
- 2½ oz For Bitter For Worse Eva’s Spritz
- 1½ oz pineapple juice
- ½ oz Wilderton Lustre
- ¼ oz Portland Syrups, ginger
- ¼ oz lime juice
- Club soda, to taste
Method
Fill a tumbler or Collins glass with cracked ice. Add all ingredients except the club soda, and stir until combined. Top with a splash of soda and garnish with a rosemary sprig and a dried citrus wheel or slice of lime or orange.
