Ask where the alcohol went and the makers give very different answers. Some say it was never there. Some say it was there the whole time.
If you assume every zero-proof spirit is a regular spirit with the alcohol taken out, you will misunderstand most of the shelf. Some start with alcohol and remove it. Some use alcohol only to pull flavor out of plants. Some ferment carefully enough to keep alcohol low. Some never ferment at all.
I went through the sites, FAQs and interviews for the brands in Zero Proof Week, plus a few outside it, to find out what each maker says actually happens. The answers vary more than the ABV range suggests, and those differences can matter once the spirit gets behind a bar.
For brand-specific claims, I prioritized the maker's own site or interviews with people responsible for making the product. Where I use outside reporting, I name it. Where a maker says little, I say little.
| Brand | How the maker says it is made | Published ABV | Opened-bottle guidance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arkay | Built without fermentation, distillation or dealcoholization | 0.0% | Not stated |
| Lyre's | Built as non-alcoholic from the outset using botanicals, extracts and natural flavors | Under 0.5% | Best within 12 weeks; refrigerate after opening |
| The Pathfinder | Hempseed fermented with selected yeast strains, then distilled and blended with botanicals | Under 0.5% | Up to 12 months at room temperature after opening |
| Tomonotomo | Agave roasted, fermented and distilled with botanicals using a proprietary process | Under 0.5% | Shelf stable; duration not stated |
| Fluère | Alcohol used during botanical extraction and distillation; final liquid diluted to very low ABV | 0.003% to 0.318%, depending on product | 12 to 16 weeks |
| Seedlip | Botanicals macerated with neutral grain spirit and water, then distilled to remove alcohol before blending | Under 0.5% | Up to 6 months |
| Spiritless | Full-strength spirit made first, then ethanol separated through reverse distillation | 0.5% | 12–18 months on consumer FAQ; wholesale FAQ says 12 months |
The method does not tell you which spirit is better. It tells you what kind of liquid the bartender is working with.
Built without an alcoholic base
Lyre's says its spirits are designed as non-alcoholic products from the beginning rather than traditional spirits that are later dealcoholized. Its team studies the flavor profile of a familiar spirit and rebuilds it using botanicals, extracts and natural flavors.
For the Dry London Spirit, Flavor Architect David Murphy used 25 natural essences and extracts, most in small amounts. He deliberately pushed the aroma harder than he would in a conventional gin because alcohol normally helps carry those aromas through tonic water. His team then tested the spirit at three different pour sizes against eight tonic waters.
That detail says a lot about this method. Without ethanol doing part of the work, concentration and aroma have to be designed around the finished drink from the beginning.
Arkay takes a different route. The company says there is no fermentation, no distillation and no dealcoholization at all. Its products are built at 0.0% from the start.
The warmth people associate with whisky, rum or gin comes partly from what Arkay calls its W.A.R.M. Molecule, a proprietary, patent-pending flavor system designed to create warming sensations without ethanol. The company says the rest of the product uses natural ingredients, but does not publish enough detail to reconstruct the formulation. I stop there too.
Large producers have explored similar approaches. FoodNavigator reported that Diageo makes Tanqueray 0.0 by steeping botanicals in water, heating and distilling them, then blending the resulting distillates. Almave skips fermentation, distilling blue agave without first converting its sugars into alcohol. Chili extract provides some of the bite, while gums and glycerol help provide body.
These products can end up beside each other on the same shelf without sharing much of a production process at all.
Fermentation, kept under control
The Pathfinder starts with hempseed.
Its FAQ says the seed is fermented with yeast strains selected to keep alcohol low while preserving flavor, then distilled. The base is later combined with botanicals including wormwood, angelica root, ginger, sage, juniper, saffron, orange peel and wild-crafted Douglas fir.
The finished spirit stays under 0.5% ABV. The company keeps the exact fermentation formula secret.
Tomonotomo also begins with fermentation, but its process starts with agave in Oaxaca.
The agave is roasted, fermented and distilled in copper stills with local botanicals, then blended with smoked pineapple and agave inulin. Tomonotomo publishes the finished spirit at under 0.5% ABV.
When I spoke with founder Amanda Chen in October, one production detail kept coming up: ginger. It has to be cut fresh and go straight into the still, kilos at a time.
That is a useful reminder of what the final ABV cannot tell you. A spirit under 0.5% may still involve roasting raw material, fermentation, fresh botanicals, distillation and considerable physical production. The finished number tells you how much alcohol remains. It does not tell you how the spirit got there.
Alcohol as an extraction tool
Other makers intentionally use alcohol during production because ethanol is useful at pulling flavor compounds out of plants.
Fluère describes its process as steam distillation. Founder Léon Meijers gave a more detailed account in a 2019 interview with Cocktails Distilled, comparing the technique with processes used by perfume houses. Botanicals are macerated with alcohol, heat releases volatile compounds, and the resulting steam is condensed. Essential oils and floral water are then separated using a Florentine separator.
Perfume makers can work with those oils at high concentration. Fluère dilutes them into something designed to be consumed.
Meijers also made an important distinction. Fluère was not making a conventional alcoholic spirit and then removing the alcohol from it. Alcohol was being used during extraction, after which the resulting components were diluted into the final product.
Fluère currently publishes residual alcohol levels ranging from 0.003% ABV for its Bitter to 0.318% for Smoked Agave.
Seedlip also uses alcohol during botanical extraction. The company has described its process as taking about six weeks. Individual ingredients are macerated and copper-pot distilled before being filtered, blended and bottled. Founder Ben Branson has described those macerations as a combination of neutral grain spirit and water. Distillation removes the alcohol while concentrating the botanical flavor.
In both cases, alcohol is a production tool rather than the foundation of the finished spirit. Very little remains, but ethanol did useful work getting flavor out of the plants.
Make the spirit first, then take the alcohol out
Spiritless starts at the other end.
Kentucky 74 begins with American oak and high-proof neutral grain spirit. The company manipulates heat and pressure in the still to accelerate extraction from the oak, producing a concentrated, full-strength spirit.
It then runs that liquid through what Spiritless calls reverse distillation. The ethanol is separated and saved for reuse in another batch. What remains is blended from different distillation runs in much the same way a whiskey producer might blend barrels.
This is the process many people imagine when they hear "non-alcoholic spirit": make an alcoholic spirit first, then remove the alcohol. It is a real method. It just is not the only one.
Dealcoholization more broadly can involve vacuum distillation or spinning cone technology, both of which allow ethanol to be separated at lower temperatures than conventional boiling. The complication is aroma. Volatile compounds can leave with the alcohol, so producers may capture them during the process and return them afterward.
Removing ethanol is not as simple as deleting one ingredient. The process can also remove things the maker wants to keep.
The process shows up on the back bar
One of the clearest differences appears after the bottle has been opened.
Lyre's recommends refrigeration and says an opened bottle is best within 12 weeks. Fluère gives its products 12 to 16 weeks after opening and says refrigeration is optional. Seedlip recommends using an opened bottle within six months and does not require refrigeration. The Pathfinder says an opened bottle can remain shelf stable at room temperature for up to 12 months.
Spiritless publishes two slightly different answers. Its consumer FAQ says an opened bottle is good for 12 to 18 months without refrigeration, while its wholesale FAQ says 12 months. Either way, that is a very different storage window from Lyre's or Fluère.
That is a meaningful operational difference for a bar deciding how many products to carry, where to store them and how quickly they need to turn inventory.
Part of the reason is simple: alcohol normally does more than intoxicate.
It carries aroma. It adds weight. It changes bitterness, texture, dilution and temperature. It is also an effective preservative.
Take it away and somebody has to decide which of those functions need replacing and how to replace them.
That is why zero-proof makers reach for such different tools. Glycerol and gums can add texture. Juice reductions and agave inulin can contribute structure. Ginger and chili can create heat. Concentrated botanicals can provide aroma. Preservatives and processing controls can help stabilize a product that no longer has much ethanol protecting it.
I looked more closely at those jobs, and the ways bartenders rebuild them in a drink, in What Replaces Alcohol in a Cocktail?.
Those choices matter in the glass too. A botanical blend engineered specifically to survive tonic water may behave differently from a fermented hemp distillate. A spirit using agave inulin for structure may tolerate dilution differently from one relying on glycerol.
None of that determines whether the drink will taste good. It tells the bartender what they are working with.
Non-alcoholic does not necessarily mean 0.0%
The label only tells part of the story.
Products styled as spirits but containing less than 0.5% ABV are not considered distilled spirits under the Federal Alcohol Administration Act. TTB's 2026 guidance says these products generally fall under FDA labeling jurisdiction instead.
FDA guidance recognizes beverages with trace amounts of alcohol below 0.5% as non-alcoholic, while "alcohol-free" is reserved for products with no detectable alcohol.
The practical distinction is simple: a product labeled non-alcoholic can still contain a small amount of alcohol.
Lyre's, The Pathfinder, Tomonotomo and Seedlip all publish their products below 0.5%. Fluère publishes exact residual percentages for each expression. Arkay says 0.0%.
If exact alcohol content matters to a guest for medical, religious, recovery or personal reasons, the category name alone is not enough information.
What to ask before you buy
Some zero-proof spirits really are made with alcohol and have it taken back out. Many are not. They may share a shelf and an ABV range, but they did not get there the same way.
The longer history of how the category developed, including dealcoholization, botanical distillation and the products that preceded the current shelf, is on the Zero Proof Project timeline.
For a bartender or beverage director, three questions can get surprisingly far:
How is it made?
What is the actual ABV of the product in front of you?
Once it is open, how long will it hold up under the conditions of your bar?
Those three answers will tell you more about what you are buying, how to store it and how to use it than the category name will.
Zero Proof Week · November 8–14, 2026
Bring your brand into the category's biggest week.
A seven-day, trade-led content series putting professional bartenders and participating brands in front of the people shaping the category. Brands take part at three levels, from a single feature to headlining the week.
Founding-partner slots are limited for this inaugural year. Questions first? info@licensedtodistill.com
