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Premium Alcohol Free Spirit Experiences with ALCONOT

Alcohol Free, Vegan and Halal: ALCONOT is a real alcohol free alternative to traditional gin
Our USP: ALCONOT is an alcohol free, Halal, Vegan and Vegetarian beverage brand for a NEW GINERATION.
Background and Mission
Not Alcohol became ALCONOT
Creating a new brand is difficult and making sure that your message is not lost is a challenge that’s why we came up with ALCONOT
Our products have been taste tested by thousand of people at events and shows, we have 95%+ positive feedback, we have vegan and halal certification and our first flavour was commended by the World Alcohol Free Awards in 2024 so we really do know our products are premium.
Our Journey
In the late 2000 and early 2010’s we found an explosion in the mocktail market, we thought about joining, glad we didn’t.
Most mocktails we have consumed to date were shocktails and the Alcohol Free market agrees.
Most of these ghastly drinks were made with the cheapest ingredients and had huge price tags. Something we were not great fans of. We held off entering a very crowded market with a growing reputation of woefully poor products.
So we turned our attention to spirits, also a crowded market, especially for traditional alcoholic drinks.
Our vision was different: alcoholic free, halal and vegans of Tequila, Gin, Sangria, oh, and beers.
We settled on gin as we have worked with all the spices and botanicals in Asian Cooking and knew how to fine tune the recipes.
Not being alcohol or gin drinkers we struggled with the concepts but finally decided the best way to create the best is to try the market leaders and improve them on taste and make them alcohol free.
We found and tested many 0% gins but when we combined them with traditional tonics and sodas we lost the ‘botanical’ notes.
Branding
With the branding, we needed a name that conveyed the message directly. It must say what it is in the name, we settled for ALCONOT.
ALCO and NOT, the strap line ‘it is what is says‘ or “it says what it is” either way the brand works.
Recipe creation
The vast majority of the recipe creation was done at home, we took a gin making course and were laughed at when we introduced our idea. At the end of the day most people on the course tried our version and were impressed.
The rest of the development was done in the kitchen – over 2 years until we got the taste we wanted. We now had a drink that we liked but we recognised it needed a professional touch to finish off the premium ambitions we had.
Development brief to our Drink Chef.
A premium all-inclusive alcohol free brand that
– Looks and feels like alcohol
– Is clean and sophisticated
– Is not alcohol and has taste and appeal for everyone
– Is certified Halal, Vegetarian and Vegan
– Is an “always sober”, “hangover free”, “drive safe” alternative.
– Safe for all to drink, whether your pregnant, on medication or you’ve never drank alcohol, ever.
This development landed around lock down and it took a toll on the business and strained and drained us.
Tasting and fine tuning
Right at the outset we engaged a number of alcohol drinkers and gin fans to proactively give feedback on the developed versions, all of them played a big part in bringing this to market, we covered key demographics, in age, background, drinking habits etc so we could have a very wide variety of testers, all of whom gave tons of valuable feedback. 11 versions and 2 years later we had the recipe for the Signature Blend Base, we needed 3 fine tuning versions after that to get to the tapestry of flavours that are in the bottle.
Because our testing covered a large enough demographic, ranging from beer and spirit drinkers that did not want touch alcohol free to teetotallers, health conscious, gym and fitness types, expecting mum and students that never want to drink we knew we had a premium all inclusive product.
We proved our credentials by being commended by the prestigious World Alcohol Free Awards in 2024 from a global panel of experts from the drinks industry
Launch – soft launch
The launch of our ALCONOT™ Signature Blend in December 2023 at the Liverpool Gin festival was hugely encouraging, over 200 people visited the stall and provided 90+% positive feedback, the other 10% were there purely for the alcohol, even then they were positive about what we were doing and many liked the taste despite it being alcohol free.
in 2025 we have developed 2 more fabulous flavours and planning a 4th in the next year or so, our market awareness is growing and we are looking to reach more people.