Soft Sell: Scottish Drinking without the Poison

On the streets of Scotland, the phrase ‘juice’ applies, in the main, to a nuclear orange fizz which offers unsurpassed hangover relief when glugged out a frosty glass bottle, outside the corner shop. I recommend buying it from my old Southside newsagent, who used to practise his French on me (I can't speak a word) and once suggested I shouldn’t walk so quietly into his shop as ‘I could have raped him’.

What mainstream Scottish juice doesn’t do (to confirm: we are talking about Irn Bru here) is contribute towards your five-a-day or provide a remotely tempting alternative to the hard stuff. But now that plans are afoot (by the SNP and Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson) to charge a minimum price for alcohol, it may be worth our while to look beyond the Bru for a softer alternative. Arguments rage on both sides as to the merits and motivations of such a move: some dub it a tax built on snobbery to pry the Diamond White out of the hands of the dependent, or say it will penalise the ‘moderate drinker’ who pops a couple of bottles of Rioja into their weekly basket; others acknowledge the fact that maybe intervention is required when a Heineken costs less than a Highland Spring, and that many publicans welcome a law that would mean stay-at-home drinking and a pint at the local have a more comparative price.

At the time of writing, questions were being raised by the EU, amongst other organisations, as to the legality of such price fixing. Regardless of whether the movement is passed, The Skinny has taste tested some of Scotland’s more artisan booze-free alternatives which may or may not be kinder to your wallet, but will definitely give your liver a holiday.

Zacharry’s Spruce Pressé

Now this is the antithesis of an e number and corn syrup-packed can. The tips of young spruce leaves (from organically certified trees near Moffat in Dumfriesshire) are mixed with spring water and lemon juice to create Spruce Pressé. The Sitka Spruce is a native of Alaska, where it has long been put to both culinary and therapeutic use; planted in the seventies by the family behind Zacharry’s, the by-products of this Scottish offshoot are being turned into everything from Spruce Chocolates to Spruce & Verbena Tea, as well as face creams and incense.

Their pressé was the first product they rolled out, and it’s packaged as a dinner table alternative to wine -a 750ml glass bottle with an eyecatchingly eco-cute label. Dubbed ‘a taste of the forest’, it lives up to its tagline - subtle, green and fresh rather than floral, and with a slightly herbal aftertaste that, once you adjust to its uniqueness, is really very pleasant (despite the stuff having a colour that can unfortunately only conjure up the word ‘sample’). A friendly leaflet around its neck suggests adding fresh mint, ice, strawberries and (although this is neither in the spirit of detox nor debt clearance) champagne. ‘It’s a bit like stone soup’ my father-in-law grumbles in the background, and he may have a point, but as a conversation starter (organic shoot juice beats Jacob’s Creek) on a hot barbeque day, it’s definitely worth a try.

Alternative:

That’s all very well, but I’d quite like to get the party off with a bit of a swing: If you like the taste of this, try Colonsay’s IPA. Similarly nice-looking, in a hefty full-pint bottle, this micro-brew from the Hebrides is a light but headily performed ale with a lychee taste that screams summer.

Williams Brothers Kyte Soda

Ah, we’re only onto the second round and we’re already (technically) cheating. Alloa-based Williams Brothers (the chaps behind Fraoch, one of Scotland’s most enduring real ales) have turned their skills to a new range of Kyte Gourmet Sodas. Still very much ‘for adults’, these admittedly have a low alcohol content but, given that the government plans are to introduce a price per unit, at under 1% abv that’ll amount to pennies.

Brewed with malted barley and Fairtrade sugar, they come in four flavours - Ginger, Strawberry, Tayberry and Gooseberry. The Ginger has a real fiery kick that’ll give your throat a wake-up call and makes for a great local alternative to a Luscombe Ginger Beer, but it’s the Tayberry that’s the real find. Cultivated in Scotland in the sixties (beating those Sitkas by a whole decade), the large sweet fruit is a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry and, in soda form, it’s a doozy. Completely lacking in the cloying, roof-of-your-mouth-coating feel you get from too much pop, this is an off-dry, slightly spiced mouthful with a quirky fruit-and-grain taste that bears repeat drinking and will merrily see you through the night.

Alternative:

That’s nice, but I’m stuck in the corner with someone showing me endless YouTube videos of bears falling onto trampolines on their iPhone and I really need something a bit stronger: Sticking with Williams Bros, why not crack open their Roisin beer which uses those same Tayberries to create a drier alternative to Belgian-style fruit beers.

Bouvrage

Moving away from those foreign interlopers and curious hybrids, Bouvrage is a drink that packs a whopping 1lb of fresh (not concentrated) Scottish raspberries into each 75cl bottle. Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, Bouvrage was ahead of the pack in recognising demand for a civilised, food-friendly soft drink that could complement rather than overwhelm what was on the plate. It’s slightly sparkling rather than rampantly fizzy, meaning no bubbles-up-the-nose-whilst-trying-to-flirt social mortification and, like the Kyte, the berry taste is understatedly sweet, evoking hedgerows and picnics rather than a vile approximation of ‘natural’ flavour courtesy of a lab. Honestly, the addition of gin didn’t once cross my mind.

The website touts its potential health giving properties (anti-stress, anti-bacterial, anti-cancer and, of course, anti-morning after) and, more recently, a Blaeberry version using fruit from the Arctic forests of Finland has been launched.

Alternative:

OK, my taxi’s going to be forty minutes and if I hear The Killers one more time, I’m going to go postal. I need oblivion: Oh, let’s just throw all pretence of good behaviour out of the window then and go for an Orkney Brewery’s Skull Splitter - in the news themselves recently after The Portman Group deemed the brand ‘too aggressive’. Ignoring the scapegoat attitude of blaming alcohol-fuelled rampages on smallscale island micro-breweries as opposed to, say, international conglomerates focused on quantity rather than quality, this 8.5% rich red beer smacks of figs, vanilla, chocolate and all manner of deliciousness, so much so that you won’t mind that it may, if the law keeps moving in its current way, have cost you the same as a Toyota Prius.