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Hiya and welcome to day 16 of our mindful drinking audio advent. Today we're talking about low no that actually tastes fantastic. My name is Denise Hamilton Mace. I'm your mindful drinking mentor, and you're listening to the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast, which is going daily for December. Now, a few years ago when I was still working in bars and restaurants, the low no or light alcohol offering behind the bar in any of the venues I worked in or went socializing in was absolutely dire. It was non-existent. In fact, I can remember a rep from Liars, the alcohol-free spirits brand, coming into one of my bars, and I was completely dismissive of him. Absolutely lovely chap. But at the time, myself, my bar manager, my ops director, none of us were very interested in it. Now I go into my local pubs. Two of them are Young's pubs, the others are independent, and I look around and there are displays in the middle of the bar of all the different alcohol-free drinks they've got. And they've got gins and beers and lager on draft that is alcohol-free. They've got a cocktail menu. In spring, they had a dedicated spritz alcohol-free menu. Things are changing, and that is fantastic news for those of us who like to drink differently. The range and the quality of these drinks has also expanded exponentially. There are gins that taste like actual gin, beers that taste like actual beer, wines that taste, well, wines they're working on it. But my point is that there are so many options for you out there now. There really is no excuse to say that you can't find anything that you like. I often say to people when they tell me that they tried an alcohol-free drink and they don't like it and they're not very good, and I ask them how many have you tried? And they'll normally tell me, one or two. And then I say, What's your favorite full strength drink? And let's imagine they say a glass of Sauvignon. And then I'll ask, How many glasses of Sauvignon Blanc did you try before you found your favourite one? And they can't tell me because of course nobody knows how many glasses of wine, how many bottles of beer, how many cans of cider we have tasted in our 20, 30, 40, 50 year drinking career. But what we do know is that we tasted some god-awful ones in that time. And yet we continued to persevere. We kept trying, we kept tasting, we kept going back. And if the drink tasted awful, what did we do? We just knocked it back, went to the bar, and asked for something different. If you gave that same opportunity to low, no and light alcohol drinks, I promise that you will find brand new favorites that you absolutely love. There are simply too many choices out there for you not to find something that you adore. So my message today is all about keeping an open mind when it comes to low-no and light alcohol drinks. Going on an exploration and finding things that you want to try. Treat yourself. Don't look at this as restriction, don't look at this as lesser. When you go into the supermarket and you're grabbing your beers for the weekend or your wines for your dinner party or whatever you're getting for your guests who are coming on Christmas Day, grab yourself a few low, no, or light options that look exciting, that look interesting. Something like, uh, depending on where you listen to these numbers, anything from 80 to 95% of people who buy low or no drinks also buy full-strength alcohol drinks. And a lot of that takes place in the supermarket because obviously it's very easy, and there you'll find brands that you recognize. However, I would also recommend that you go and check out dedicated online retailers because that's where the real gold is. When you check out sites like Dry Drinker, Wise Bartender, uh, the Alcohol Free Drinks Company, Alcoholfreydrinks.co, uh, mid-strength drinks, there are online retailers whose sole purpose is to bring low, no, and light alcohol drinks to the masses, and that is where you'll find creative drinks, you'll find unique flavours, you'll find different styles, you'll find alternatives, you'll find drinks that have 0%, 0.5%, all the way up to mid-strength drinks. There's so much to experiment with, and some of it is absolutely divine. Now, of course, not all of it is. I never pretend to you that everything is is fabulous, but like I said before, not every full strength drink you've tasted is fabulous either. Give them a try and make sure you come back and tell me what you've found that you adore because I'm always excited to try some new things. Now, behind today's door of the advent, when you open it, you'll be taken to uh day 16, of course, and at the bottom you will find my personal selection of some of my favorite, favorite low, no, and light drinks that I've tried over the year. So give those a go. Let me know what you think. I'll see you tomorrow for day 17. And until then, cheers to a Christmas less intoxicated.