Until very recently, it was rare to see bartenders devoting significant attention to non-alcoholic drinks. Within the last five or so years, a cocktail menu with a dedicated non-alcoholic section has gone from an outlier to a baseline expectation. Much of this phenomenon is thanks to the growing list of new products built around satisfying curiosity and demand. It takes time for any new category to establish trust. And while the widespread interest in non-alcoholic drinks is unquestionably a recent development, not everything in a bartender’s toolkit is. Drinks like Crodino, an Italian aperitif spritz developed in the 1960s, have enjoyed a global following for decades.
Fortunately, for bartenders like Steve Kämmerer, managing partner at an upscale cocktail spot in Brooklyn, New York, the industry can look to the past in order to build the future. “Personally, I tried Crodino for the first time when I was six or seven years old,” he says. “It’s been in my family since childhood.” Kämmerer was born in Venezuela to Basque and German parents and Crodino has been a part of his life for as long as he can remember. While kids who grew up stateside might have fond memories of their parents letting them drink sugary sodas at a birthday party, for him a bottle of Crodino with its slightly bitter finish was “a celebration moment.”
Those memories laid dormant for over two decades until he rediscovered it after moving to New York City. In Proustian fashion, a sip of Crodino brought back a rush of memories of happy times spent with his brother and grandmother growing up in Venezuela. He knew it was a perfect fit for his bar’s growing non-alcoholic drinks program. “I think nothing else could have found room so easily in the menu when it comes to non-alcoholic options.”
Kämmerer has been refining his non-alcoholic drinks program ever since a recent Dry January demonstrated his customers’ demand for non-alcoholic drinks that are made with the same integrity as any other drink on their menu.
Implementing zero proof drink options can be challenging for a few reasons, but one of them is that they just don’t move with the same volume as the rest of the menu. While it makes good business sense to offer these options, the amount of work needed to deliver them is often prohibitive. Many bars spend hours every week preparing infusions, syrups, and other elements to bring complexity and deliciousness into their non-alcoholic programs, meaning that the costs that go into non-alcoholic programs are often outsized in proportion to the amount of revenue they bring in. This is why drinks like Crodino, which are shelf-stable and single-serving, are so useful to bars and restaurants looking to expand their non-alcoholic offerings.
Crodino is made in much the same way as bitter botanical liqueur favorites like Aperol or Campari. A blend of 15 botanicals such as cardamom, clove, nutmeg and coriander are steeped for up to six months, allowing the inherent bitterness and aromatic intensity from each ingredient to fully develop.
Kämmerer serves Crodino simply: on the rocks with a splash of sparkling water, garnished with orange and olive. His presentation highlights Crodino’s layered flavors supported by a balance of sweetness and bitterness. “Zesty grapefruit and Aperol vibes,” he says of the drink’s flavor as well as the visual signal as an aperitivo option that can be key in setting up the right expectation in the mind of the person it’s served to.
Building out his menu’s non-alcoholic offerings has been a “game changer” according to Kämmerer. He notices the hesitation many people have when considering non-alcoholic options; they don’t want to risk ending up with a “plain and simple” drink. He loves to see that fear transform to delight. “To see people’s faces react when Crodino comes out to the table is kind of funny,” he says. “They don’t expect it to look like an actual spritz that you are enjoying in a public square in Venice.”
Crodino also has a place in Kämmerer’s personal life, off the clock. “My girlfriend loves it,” he says. Their at-home version sometimes swaps out the sparkling water for tonic, dialing up Crodino’s pleasant bitterness.
Thanks in part to products like Crodino, Kämmerer sees promise in the future of non-alcoholic cocktails, especially as people’s expectations adapt to match the level of care that the industry is putting into this category. That the public’s level of trust in the non-alcoholic category lags behind traditional alcohol-based drinks is not surprising. Overall, the category can be seen as “new” with the vast majority of products only launching in the past few years. It’s easy to trust a product like gin or cognac that has centuries of history, or classic cocktails like the Negroni that have been consistent and reliable choices for drinkers for generations. But products like Crodino show that we’ve been caring about non-alcoholic options for a lot longer than people might think.
Kämmerer is thrilled to have rediscovered Crodino after all these years because it checks all the boxes that he sees are key to building the public’s trust in this not-as-new-as-you-might-think category: “It has to be delicious, elegant, easy, composed. It works.”
This article is sponsored by Crodino.
