Boston Bottle

Boston Bottle sits at 372 Commercial Street on the waterfront side of the North End, close to the Charlestown Bridge and the harbour walk, and trades as a full-line craft beer, fine wine and spirits shop. It is included here for the same reason a good general bottle shop earns a place in any city: the range of non-alcoholic products it stocks is deep enough that a reader can furnish a whole evening from it, and the store treats that range as a category with its own navigation rather than an afterthought squeezed between the seltzer and the mixers.

The non-alcoholic section is broken down the way the alcoholic one is. Beer is sorted by style, with non-alcoholic pilsners, IPAs, sours, dark beers and ciders listed separately. Wine is sorted by colour, with dealcoholised red, white, rose and sparkling. Spirits are sorted by base, covering non-alcoholic gin, whiskey, tequila and mezcal, rum and vodka, and there is a separate line of non-alcoholic aperitifs, digestifs and vermouths, which is the part most general bottle shops skip and the part that actually makes a zero-proof cocktail taste like a cocktail. Ready-to-drink zero-proof cocktails, kombucha and functional drinks, craft sodas, sparkling water, wellness shots and juices fill out the fridge, and the shop also carries bitters, syrups, mixers and bar tools. The hours help: 10am to 10pm Monday through Thursday and Sunday, and to 11pm on Friday and Saturday, which is later than the dedicated non-alcoholic bottle shops in the metro keep. Anyone who wants a specialist, alcohol-free-only shop should go to Dray in the South End or Central Square instead; this is the generalist option, and it is the one open latest. One caveat worth stating: this is retail, not a bar, so the listing is for stocking an evening in rather than going out. Anyone who wants a specialist shop where every product on the shelf is alcohol-free will be better served by the two Dray stores, but Boston Bottle is open later and covers the North End and the waterfront.