19 Low-Alcohol Drink Recipes | Epicurious

These low-alcohol cocktail recipes are less potent than your average drink, but that doesn’t make them any less exciting. Just because you’re skipping your usual Manhattan, Negroni, or margarita this go around doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy something with complex flavor and micro-dose that relaxation factor.

These drinks take inspiration from classic cocktail recipes, replacing the tequila, rum, and whiskey with strongly brewed teas, floral fruit juices and syrups, and fizzy kombucha. They use spirits usually relegated to background players—things like vermouth, amaro, sherry, and liqueurs—and make them the star. Or they dilute a strong base with plenty of seltzer or tonic water to mellow it into a refreshing spritz cocktail.

But what exactly constitutes a low-alcohol (or low-ABV, a.k.a. the percentage of alcohol-by-volume) cocktail? Most bartenders define the term as any drink that falls in the range of 3%–10% ABV. To put that in context, a dry martini is upwards of 30% ABV.

Not drinking any alcohol these days? We have plenty of nonalcoholic drink options. But if you’re looking forward to an afternoon of mindful drinking, or you simply want to cut back on your alcohol consumption while keeping the party going the low-alcohol drinks below will take you from happy hour to last call. And if you want the exact ABV of any drink (one on this list or from anywhere at all), plug the recipe into The Epicurious Cocktail ABV Calculator.