Four days drinking club soda at the biggest cocktail festival on the planet

The Thursday Spark, on a Friday morning, from New Orleans.

Scott and I just spent four days at Tales of the Cocktail, where thousands of bartenders, brand reps, owners and others in the industry descend on the city. We did it all: seminars, alcohol-free tastings, and a club soda at every bar in the French Quarter.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, as we came down with no pre-defined agenda, other than learning and connecting. I was blown away by the focus on No+Low movement. We're leaving inspired and strongly convinced this isn't a trend. It's here to stay.

More to come next week, the long version, once I've been through the notes. The whole thing ran 9am to midnight, four days straight. Extremely well organized, food everywhere, and club soda at every single event. And although each event had tons of free booze and cocktails, not once did I have to explain my order.

Here are the highlights:

🍹 Don’t call it a mocktail. This word is hereby banned from the CSC lexicon. It gives orange and pineapple juice in a plastic cup vibes. Mock means fake. Nothing these people are making is fake. The hundreds of bartenders we talked to are working just as hard on the alcohol-free menu as the other one, sometimes harder.

📊 Nine out of ten. That's how many people buying alcohol-free spirits still drink alcohol. The industry calls them switchers. We call them part-time members. The biggest growth in this whole category isn't people quitting. It's people choosing, one night at a time.

🍸 The menu moved. Jeffrey Morgenthaler made the case for pulling the alcohol-free list off the back page, out from next to the ginger ale, and putting it top-left where your eye lands first. Check the next menu you're handed. If the alcohol-free drinks are up front, that bar is paying attention.

👁️ First sip of The Pathfinder. Blown away. Some of that is Michael and Natalie telling the story right, but I’m pretty much sold. Most alcohol-free bottles sell you what they left out. This one sells you what’s in it: fermented grain, hemp, juniper, gentian, wormwood. They call it the destroyer of bad vibes. We sat down with Michael for an All Bubbles. No Troubles. episode before we left town. That one’s coming.

👟 We walked every day before the bars opened. Joshua Gandee and Focus on Health organize a walk-and-run club that meets while most of Tales is still asleep, and the rule is you move as a pack, not for a PR. Nobody chased a time. Everybody talked. Joshua's a full-time member and hosts the No Proof Podcast, which he put Scott and me on while we were down there. Give the show a follow.

🏆 We went to a vodka soda competition and picked a favorite: the one without the vodka. Q sponsored it, so there was Q everywhere, and Q on the rocks holds up on its own. Biggest cocktail festival on the planet, and the best thing in the glass was the mixer.

🥤 Best club soda in New Orleans. The Maison on Frenchmen Street, poured by Bella. Simple and elegant at the same time, which is harder than it sounds. Honorable mention to Ryan’s Pub, where we drank the most of them all week and Victoria poured them double every time. Yes, a double club soda. Yes, we tipped like it was top shelf.

🫧 We were the most hydrated people at Tales. Topo Chico was an official sponsor, so there were bins of it everywhere you turned. Perrier too. We did not pace ourselves.

Three days, three recaps, shot and edited by Scott Nixon. Now up on YouTube.

Know someone who's thinking about it? There's no membership requirement.

Part-time members, full-time members, "I'm just curious" members. All welcome. So whether you've got a friend who's been saying "I should probably cut back" every Sunday morning for the last six months, or a friend who's already all-in on the alcohol-free life and just hasn't found their people yet — send them your link . They subscribe to the free newsletter, you both win. No pressure, no program, no weird pamphlets.

Basically, if they've ever ordered a club soda (or anything else non-alcoholic) and felt like they had to explain themselves... they're already one of us.

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