Less Sugary Sodas To Mix Things Up
courtesy Heidi’s Bridge, Casamara Club
Great-tasting carbonated bitters are finally being made in the states!
I’m decidedly not a Dry January fan. It’s fine if you are. You do you, as they say. Never mind that I have to drink to do my job effectively. But also, I have found that wholesale avoidance of a thing I enjoy eating or drinking means I’m going to binge on it when I have it again. My preferred year round discipline is to take off at least two nights a week (most weeks I aim for three) from drinking any alcohol. In my ongoing effort to juggle doing my job while also staying fit and keeping my weight down (which I am proud to report has been successful, by the way), I am also very mindful of what I eat on those occasions, and make a point of avoiding excess sugar.
Mocktails, zero proof drinks, whatever the kids call them these days—these are not on my day off agenda. I said low sugar, remember? I have yet to meet one of these non-alcoholic drinks that isn’t a calorie-riffic nightmare loaded with sugary juices and other weighty ingredients to help zhush them up. In fact, I feel even guiltier sipping them than I would if they contained booze because, especially those without ice cream (ice cream is always the exception), it wasn’t even any fun to drink it and now I have to work off the calories. To me, sugary mocktails are the dietetic equivalent of paying a medical bill instead of using my money to buy a cool new pair of boots or a stack of records.
Two ways I’ve managed to keep my palate interested on my nights off are stocking a heavy rotation of fun herbal teas in the pantry (hot in cold weather, iced when it’s hot), and an array of different flavored bitters to drop into my Sodastream-ed bubbly water. That’s worked, but I’ve been on the hunt for a delicious non alcoholic RTD carbonated drink. I’ve found it challenging to find good ones that aren’t too sweet, with real ingredients, and no artificial sugars (which never taste right and irritate my insides). It’s even more of a challenge to find non-alcoholic carbonated beverages that skew toward the more savory or even slightly bitter side. They’ve got this figured out in countries like Italy and Germany, but it’s taken a while for any good equivalents to be produced stateside
But they have. Finally.
“Italy has a long-standing love of bitter sodas, and while over here, we still have to know an Italian grocer or poke around online to get hold of a (pricey) ten-pack of Sanbitter, but US makers are starting to catch on,” says writer and former Bon Appétit editor Julia Bainbridge. She recently took a deep dive into the world of zero proof beverages for her upcoming book Good Drinks: For Those Who Aren’t Drinking, For Whatever Reason (due out this coming October), and discovered some promising new products produced in the states.
One of those is Casamara Club, a brand founded by Detroit-based lawyer Jason LaValla, who became fascinated with amaro, and began making his own at home. Like many of us, he was also looking for a non-alcoholic version for those time off moments, but wasn’t having much luck. He saw an opportunity to create a brand of flavorful sodas that communicate the herbal flavor complexity of amari liqueurs, but without the booze, and also without much added sugar (each Casamara flavor contains only 15 calories’ worth). “One of my favorite things about bitters & soda, and part of the reason I wanted to bottle something like that, is that it doesn't have to be sweet to taste great,” explains LaValla. “When I started out, it didn't even occur to me that most bitters contain some sugar. But as I figured out our recipes, I found that just a few grams added so much depth to the botanical notes. It's kind of like priming a wall before you paint. It's not always necessary, but it really makes the colors pop.”
Casamara’s flavors, typically available for around $3 a bottle at Murray’s Cheese in NYC and other fine grocery stores around the country, consist of Alta (the like an aperitivo spritz of the bunch), Onda (herbal limonata), Capo (minty and the most herbaceous), and Sera (cinnamony and berry-like). Another nod to Italian culture comes in the form of colorful packaging art by designer Mike Van Hall—reminiscent of the type of graphic design popular in Italy during the 1920s and ‘30s.
courtesy Heidi’s Bridge, Casamara Club
“All of the traditional, Italian amaro recipes get treated like state secrets, so making my own seemed like a fun way to demystify something that I love,” shares La Valla. He says he turned to amaro soft drinks instead of commercializing his own amaro liqueur because he felt there were already so many good ones from American producers (like Don Ciccio & Figli in Washington, DC or the ones from 2019 NY International Spirits Competition medalist Eda Rhyne Distilling in Asheville, NC, for example). “The ‘amaro soft drinks’ concept evolved as a play on bitters & soda, when I realized that nobody was bottling the kind of complex, dry soft drinks I actually want to drink when I'm not drinking.”
Bainbridge says she is a big fan of Casamara, but has also discovered some other less sweet options in her research. “There’s Bitter Love ‘sparkling drinking bitters’, made in Portland, Maine (by an all-female team). The best flavor, in my opinion, is the peppered grapefruit, which gets its bitterness from a blend of ashwagandha, gentian, ginger, artichoke, and artemisia annua.”
Spirits and cocktail connoisseurs aren’t the only people seeking more bitter-flavored, non-alcoholic options. Bainbridge has another suggestion that might appeal to beer lovers too: “Hops are another ingredient that imparts bitterness, and I'm into Hoplark's hops-infused [sparkling] teas made in Boulder, Colorado.”
OK, so what about combining the best of both worlds, and adding a bit of booze to these less sugary mixers for lower calorie highball options? “My favorite highball pairings are probably Alta with an aperitivo like Campari, Onda with an herbal amaro like Montenegro, Capo with sweet vermouth, and Sera with mezcal and a splash of grapefruit,” says LaValla.
That reminds me, my next night on, I need to test out some gins and tequilas to mix with Grocers Bottling Celery Soda by Court Street Grocers. Doesn’t get much more Brooklyn 2020 than that.