L’Chaim! – Salute! – Prost! – Santé! –
Dec. 27, 2024 – What my sober friends tell me they miss the most about drinking isn’t always the booze itself, but rather the shared rituals. Happy hours after work with friends, boozy brunches on Sundays. New Year’s Eve toasts. Even for those who don’t hit the bottle hard, ringing in the first moments of the new year with a solitary glass of sparking wine is a tradition as wholesome as it gets (when it comes to alcohol).
There may be trace amounts of alcohol. “For a drink to be legally non-alcoholic, it has to be 0.5% alcohol by volume or less,” writes The Zero Proof, a non-alcoholic wine retailer I’ve just recently bought from. “While this doesn’t make it totally alcohol free, it does mean it is impossible to experience any intoxication or other psychoactive effects from alcohol. For context, a slice of sourdough bread or a ripe banana has more alcohol by volume than any of our drinks!”
