Spiritless

Barrel Bar & Grill sits on Whiskey Row, the block of West Main Street that holds Louisville's bourbon-tourism distilleries, and is the bar and grill attached to the Louisville Comedy Club. Its zero-proof list is the most locally rooted in the city: the Zero Proof Old Fashioned is built on Kentucky 74, the non-alcoholic bourbon made in Louisville by Spiritless, so the signature Kentucky drink is served here in a genuinely Kentucky alcohol-free form rather than as an imported substitute. Alongside it sit the Pineapple Upside Down Cake, built on caramel, ginger and grenadine, and the Cinderella — orange and pineapple juice with ginger ale, grenadine and bitters.

Proof on Main is the restaurant and bar of the 21c Museum Hotel on West Main Street, open since 2006 and a fixture of Louisville dining, with a bar holding more than 75 Kentucky bourbons. Its non-alcoholic programme is among the deepest in the city and is built on stock rather than improvisation: the bar carries the full Lyre's range plus Spiritless Kentucky 74 and Jalisco 55, the Louisville-made non-alcoholic bourbon and tequila, and NKD LDY de-alcoholised gin, and it makes its own ginger ale and tonic water in house. Effectively anything on the cocktail list can be built alcohol-free, and the bar also understands half-measures for anyone reducing rather than stopping.

The Pine Room is a neighbourhood restaurant in historic Harrods Creek, on River Road north-east of Louisville, and it keeps one of the better-stocked non-alcoholic back bars in the metro. Rather than a single token bottle it carries both of the Louisville-made Spiritless expressions — Kentucky 74, the non-alcoholic bourbon, and Jalisco 55, the non-alcoholic tequila — which means the two drinks most people actually want, an old fashioned and a paloma, can both be built properly here without alcohol. The paloma is the one the city's zero-proof coverage names. Dinner runs Tuesday to Sunday with weekend brunch from 9am, and the room sits close enough to the Ohio River to make the drive worthwhile.

Volare is a long-running Italian restaurant on Frankfort Avenue in Clifton, named Best Italian Restaurant by readers of Louisville Magazine three years running, with a seasonal menu built on locally sourced produce and house-made pasta. Its place in a non-alcoholic guide rests on one thing done properly: the bar builds Spiritless Manhattans, using the Louisville-made non-alcoholic bourbon Kentucky 74 in place of rye or bourbon. A manhattan is a spirit-forward, stirred, undiluted drink — the hardest category to render without alcohol and the one most bars refuse to attempt — so a restaurant offering it as standard is making a real claim. Dinner runs seven nights from 4:30pm.

Watch Hill Proper is a bourbon bar and restaurant in Norton Commons, the walkable development in Prospect north-east of Louisville, and it claims the largest bourbon collection in the country alongside the most extensive American whiskey menu it can assemble. That is exactly the sort of room a non-drinker usually writes off — which is why it matters that it also keeps Spiritless Kentucky 74, the non-alcoholic bourbon made in Louisville, on the menu. The bar runs later than the kitchen, to 11pm midweek and midnight at weekends, and a Tuesday night live music series gives the room a reason to be in it that is not the whiskey list.