Sundry & Vice

Sundry & Vice started in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine as an apothecary-styled cocktail bar with an unusually serious hospitality culture, and in October 2021 it crossed a state line for the first time, opening inside the Bottleworks Hotel at 850 Massachusetts Avenue. The Bottleworks District is the redeveloped Coca-Cola bottling plant that anchors the north end of Mass Ave, and the bar fits the building: pharmacy cabinets, apothecary bottles, a soda-fountain lineage and a room that reads as pre-war chemist rather than speakeasy pastiche. The house style is modern readings of classics, built on syrups made in-house and juice squeezed to order, with an unusual emphasis on cocktails poured from draft lines.

That infrastructure is exactly what makes a good non-alcoholic drink possible, and Sundry & Vice uses it. The Young and the Spiritless is the more elaborate build: Spiritless non-alcoholic bourbon carrying pineapple, cinnamon, orgeat, plum bitters and mint, lengthened with ginger beer, so the drink has the weight and bitterness a bourbon sour would have rather than reading as a soft drink. 24 Carrot Magic is the vegetal counterpart, layering Seedlip Grove — the citrus expression of the London-made non-alcoholic distillate — over carrot, lemon, pineapple, black pepper and ginger. Both appear in Visit Indy's official Buzz-Free Drinks guide, which is the closest thing the city has to a municipal endorsement of a zero-proof list.

The practical case for coming here is location as much as menu. Within roughly two hundred metres you also have The Fountain Room's printed No ABV section in the same complex, and BODHI and Ball & Biscuit a short walk down Mass Ave, which makes this the densest concentration of credible non-alcoholic drinking in Indiana. Being inside a hotel, it also runs a more consistent evening than a standalone bar and is a reasonable solo stop.