Alley Twenty Six

Alley Twenty Six has been downtown Durham's benchmark cocktail bar for years, and it is one of the few in the region where the non-alcoholic list is a product of the same development process as the rest of the menu rather than an afterthought bolted on for Dry January. The bar runs experimental sessions on Thursday mornings — owner Shannon Healy and his bartenders building new syrups, tinctures and cordials specifically for zero-proof drinks, and holding them to the standard they would apply to anything with spirit in it.

The infrastructure behind that is the tonic programme. The bar makes around twenty house tonics, and they serve both sides of the list: the same blood orange or cinchona-bittered tonic that sharpens a gin drink also gives a non-alcoholic build the backbone it would otherwise be missing. This is the technical answer to the usual complaint about zero-proof cocktails, which is that they taste like juice. Bitterness, acid and tannin have to come from somewhere, and here they come from house production rather than a bottle of syrup.

The current section is headed simply "Non-Alcohol" and runs four drinks. Starry Eyed Fig uses figs from local gardens with champagne acid and lemon over soda. The Sunset Sipper is built on two of the house syrups — the bar's own tonic and blood orange — with lime and soda. Earl Please and Conch Shell are both tea-based, the first on Earl Grey with passionfruit, ginger and lime, the second on rooibos with blackberry, rosemary, lime and a line of balsamic that does the work bitters would normally do.

The list is refreshed seasonally, so what is pouring on any given visit will move. It is worth noting that several published Triangle round-ups still credit this bar with a booze-free hot toddy and a drink called "No Thanks, I'm Driving"; neither is on the current menu. Read the list when you arrive rather than the article that sent you.