The Drinks Got Way Better

The best drink I had last week had no alcohol in it!

I was at Rouge Bar in Montréal and ordered a non-alc Amaretto Sour made with NOA 0% Amaretto and wow, this was good!! The texture, the foam, the taste, it was all there. Just like an alcoholic drink!I took one sip and thought: okay, this is really good (I even dropped a little church word, the Québec way 😅). Not "good for a non-alcoholic cocktail." Just good.

I taste a lot of these

It's part of the job (a pretty fun part, I'll admit). Bottles and cans cross my desk all week, most of them full of promise, some of them not quite there yet.. so I usually get a feel for where things are heading long before anything hits a shelf. And lately, that feeling is pretty simple: it has never been this good!

We were early

When we started Upside four years ago, the category was thin. Like, really thin. Believing in it felt early, maybe even a little stubborn (a few people told us so). But that was the whole bet: get out in front, back the makers who were serious, and be ready for the day everyone else caught on.

The shelf caught up

And fast! The beer has real bitterness now, right where it should be. The aperitifs have an actual backbone, bittersweet and grown-up, not a sad splash of juice. The sparkling ones finally have structure, not just sugar.

Want proof? Grab a Guinness 0 (that creamy pour is all there, I swear) or a Templ Lager, crisp and clean. I'd put either one in anyone's hand without saying a word about the alcohol.

And for the skeptics who say they've never had a good non-alc wine or whisky.. fair enough, those are the hardest ones to get right. But they're getting better every year, and some of them are really worth a second try!

These aren't stand-ins anymore.. they're the real thing, made by people who drink and know exactly what they're going for. Somewhere along the way I stopped grading on a curve, and now I just drink what I like.

The trade-off is gone

For years, a great drink and a clear morning were two different choices: you picked one, and you paid for the other. That's over. You can have the drink you actually want AND wake up sharp the next day. Both. Same night.

That used to be our pitch to people who didn't believe us yet.. now I don't even think about it.

Final word

Here's what snuck up on me: drinking less stopped feeling like a sacrifice. The drinks just got so much better!! We saw it coming, and honestly, it still beat everything I pictured.

Cheers 🥂

SP.