Yes Way, NA
Wherein I share my thoughts on Nashville’s non-alcoholic offerings — and a new store where they're the name of the game
Cheap beer and expensive Champagne. I didn’t keep much in my fridge during my New York drinking days, but I always had bottles of Budweiser (the real thing: none of that Lite stuff) and Moët & Chandon on hand. All about that high-low.
I occasionally drank wine, though I never learned what makes one great and the next one eh. I just knew that it tasted good, was usually served in a sexy glass, and reliably got me sideways. (I don’t have (m)any regrets about quitting drinking, but I do hate that I can’t walk into Woodland Wine and choose a fabulous bottle to take to a dinner party based on something more than an excellently designed label. Luckily, I trust everyone in there implicitly: they give awesome recs.)
Even though I haven’t had a drink of the real stuff in over 18 years, I still miss it. Not the high; I lost that craving pretty quickly. But I still yearn for the taste of red wine with steak, a beer in the summer sun, or the occasional gimlet if I’m feeling especially grown up.
When I first got sober, if I wanted to fake one of those scenarios, I was SOL. The non-alcoholic beers and wines on the market in the aughts were a shitty waste of calories — the liquid equivalent of eating cardboard. I can assure you, no one has ever really looked forward to cracking open an icy cold O’Douls at the end of a hard day. And as for early NA wines: grape juice. And not the good kind.
To add insult to injury, NA options have traditionally been hard to find. For most of my sober life, very little to no attention has been paid to non-drinkers at bars, restaurants, and parties. Conventional wisdom may say that club soda with a twist of lime will make us happy, but water does not a generous vodka substitute make.
Things started to get a little better a decade or so ago, when I discovered Clausthaler beer. It was an elusive get in Nashville at that time. So I set out to change that by asking for it literally every time I shopped at the Turnip Truck, my local specialty grocery. (I’m sure it wasn’t all me, but who cares: it worked!)
Around 2017, things started to noticeably change. A new NA brand called WellBeing began showing up in liquor store beer coolers. And it was legit good — hoppy with no watery aftertaste. Slowly — and perhaps in very small part because of my incessant needling of bartenders and restaurant owners everywhere I went — WellBeing started to pop up on bar menus locally, too.
Around the same time, a much-improved commuity of non-alcoholic cocktails slinked onto the scene. At first, offerings were pretty unimaginative, usually amounting to little more than a random mix of juice and ginger topped off with tonic and maybe an herb garnish. Yawn. Personally, I want my alcohol to taste like alcohol, even when it’s fake. But NA liquors have become more common, with cocktails made from “real” fake spirits now widely available.
I give a lot of credit to Chef Sean Brock, a fellow sober person, for being among the first Nashville restauranteurs to roll out a truly elevated NA cocktail menu. His local restaurants have some of the most inventive and flavorful selections in town (I had a tomato-based NA drink at Audrey early on that I still think about).
One of several other restaurants in town who have intentionally upped their zero-proof cocktail game, my client Café Roze recently released a stellar NA menu that includes drinks make with faux tequila, gin and bourbon. (Check out this story about how Roze’s chef/owner Julia Jaksic and other Nashville restaurants are changing the NA narrative in this renowned party town.)
The real (zero-)proof that Nashville is becoming a non-drinker’s drinking town is the arrival of Killjoy, the city’s first store solely devoted to NA wine, beer, and spirits.
Killjoy opened in March in the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood and response has been strong. Not surprisingly, progressive East Nashvillians have been a big part of Killjoy’s early fan base, says co-owner Stephanie Styll. She was kind enough to give me a few minutes of her time this week to talk about the store.
So, who else is shopping there, and why? Stephanie, who runs the store with her also-sober partners, her husband Elisha Caldwell and brother-in-law John Caldwell, says that there isn’t one type of shopper or one reason they come in.
Some haven’t had a drink in years and are excited to finally be able to fulfill their NA needs in one place, she says. Others are newly “sober-curious,” and come to learn about what’s available to them as they consider a non-drinker’s life.
Then there are those who go NA for health and wellness reasons. Maybe they need to cut down on their drinking and want to augment their home bars with some NA selections (your sober friends thank you!). Or perhaps they’re looking to go zero-proof as part of their efforts to slim down. “Unlike alcoholic wines, NA bottles have labels, so you can see the ingredients as well as the calories and sugar content,” Stephanie explains, adding that some are even sugar- and gluten-free.
At 300 square feet, Killjoy is small, but it undoubtably has the best and largest selection of no-octane booze in Nashville, with 33 varieties of wine, 23 different spirits, and 25 beer choices. “Most people don’t recognize 90 percent of the brands,” she says. “But they always remark on the ten percent they do, like Recess and Guinness.”
Stephanie says that the most important part of her job — other than constantly researching new brands (tough gig) — is education. “There’s very little information out there right now in this area, so not many people know more than I do,” she says. “People can come in and ask me about every single product on the shelves. If you buy NA at a grocery or liquor store, [the salespeople] probably haven’t tried it all.”
When I visited Killjoy last weekend, John was working. I spent an hour there, asking him questions about new-to-me brands and letting him pour me shots from the selection of open spirits displayed on the store’s bar cart. It was really fun, and I learned a lot.
I went in already relatively well-versed in dealcoholized wine and NA beer, but spirts are an area I haven’t really dabbled in. I was blown away by what I tried. There are some very convincing dupes out there — and a lot of them are beautifully branded. The Pathfinder, Drink Monday, Ghia, and Lyre’s bottles are pretty enough to keep out on the counter. (Tip: plan to drink open bottles quickly, as most zero-proof booze is only good a few days or weeks after it’s opened.)
I left with a box full of beer and wine to try, and am going to head back for some “liquor” soon — the smoky dream that is Drink Monday mezcal is calling me. Later this summer, I plan to have a little NA cocktail party chez moi and have the group review some of my new Killjoy finds. Stay tuned!
Killjoy
www.killjoyclub.com
2020 Lindell Avenue
Off Wedgewood Ave., near I-65 South
Wednesday & Thursday 11-3
Friday & Saturday 11-6
Instagram: @killjoy_nash
For upcoming Killjoy events, click here.
The Coolest Thing I Saw Last Week
Last Friday, my dear friend, the fab.u.lous Sylvia Rapoport, took me to dinner and a concert. That alone would have been special enough — Sylvia is one of my favorite people to hang out with. But this wasn’t just any concert.
It was a string quintet of local musicians, collectively called Fever, performing an hour’s worth of songs by Radiohead. Lit by hundreds of flickering candles. Inside Nashville’s Parthenon. At the feet of the giant gold-swathed Athena. Epic.
Good news is that it wasn’t a one-time thing. The Centennial Park Conservancy is hosting these candlelight concerts through the year, with tributes to the music of pop icons including Queen, Taylor Swift, Coldplay, and Adele (they throw some Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, and Mozart in there, too). You can see the whole schedule (there are two 65-minute shows a night) and buy tickets here. I promise, your $30 will be incredibly well spent.
The Best Costume For The Day
I am in the process of packing for a trip to France: I’ll spend 11 days in Normandy (coming at you, Alex Marshall and Lisa Donovan!) before heading to Paris for a few more before I slip back into the cloak of humidity that is Middle Tennessee in the summer. I’ll be posting much more about this trip throughout the month.
I’m a perennial over-packer — shocking, I know. But not this time! I am determined to get everything I need for two weeks away in one suitcase, albeit the largest one that Muji makes.
That means lots of one-piece looks, in the form of jumpsuits and dresses. The latter category is currently very well-covered, thanks in part to my new pals at Doen, who were kind enough to set me up with some beauties from their new collection.
The dress I’m wearing here is the Benoit, made from cotton poplin printed with an archival Liberty design. Just add panties and some sandals and I’m set for a day exploring the countryside in Normandy.
À bientôt, mes amis,
Libby
This is wonderful -- thank you!