Ginsin is a Spanish 0.0% gin built on twelve botanicals — juniper leading, then cardamom, coriander, sweet and bitter orange, lemon, cinnamon, orange blossom, hibiscus, violet, lavender and myrtle. Pale aqua in the bottle. Juniper and citrus peel on the nose, crisp and gently spiced on the palate, clean and dry on the finish. Never fermented, so it is 0.0% by nature rather than by removal.
Below are ten drinks built around it. They are ordered from the simplest to the most involved, and each one says why it works.
First: why some 0.0% cocktails taste flat — and the four fixes
Alcohol does more than carry flavour. It carries texture, warmth and length. Take it out and put nothing back, and a drink reads as sweet juice in a nice glass. Professional bars solve this with four levers, and every recipe below pulls at least two of them.
- Acid. Fresh citrus or verjus. This is what gives the drink a finish instead of a fade.
- Bitterness. Tonic, gentian, bitter herbs, citrus pith. Bitterness is what makes a drink feel structured rather than sweet.
- Texture. Carbonation, or aquafaba and egg white. This replaces the weight alcohol used to provide.
- Salt. A pinch in shaken drinks, or a few drops of saline in stirred ones. It lifts aromatics and suppresses bitterness that has gone too far.
One more principle, and it decides which classics are worth attempting: drinks with several ingredients adapt far better than minimalist, spirit-forward ones. A Collins or a Negroni has somewhere to hide. A Martini has nowhere — which is why it is last on this list, with instructions.
1. The Ginsin & Tonic
50ml Ginsin · 150ml tonic water · lime wedge · 3 juniper berries
Fill a large wine glass completely with ice — more ice, not less, so it melts slower. Pour the Ginsin, then the tonic down the inside of the glass to keep the bubbles. Stir once. Add lime and juniper.
Why it works: tonic's quinine supplies the bitterness alcohol normally provides, and the carbonation supplies texture. Two of the four levers in a drink with two ingredients. This is the serve to judge the bottle by.
2. The Tom Collins
50ml Ginsin · 25ml lemon juice · 15ml simple syrup · soda water · lemon wheel
Shake the first three with ice, strain into a tall glass over fresh ice, top with soda.
Why it works: the Collins is the single most reliable classic to build without alcohol. Acid, sugar and carbonation are doing the structural work, and the gin is there for aroma rather than backbone — which is exactly what a 0.0% gin is good at.
3. The Garden Spritz
50ml Ginsin · 100ml soda water · 3 ribbons cucumber · sprig of mint
Build in the glass over ice. Slap the mint between your palms before adding it — that releases the oil without shredding the leaf.
Why it works: cucumber and mint push the florals in the botanical mix forward. Low sugar, high aroma.
4. The Virgin Gimlet
60ml Ginsin · 20ml lime cordial · lime twist
Shake hard with ice, double-strain into a chilled coupe.
Why it works: cordial rather than fresh lime is deliberate. It brings sugar and acid together with a slight cooked-citrus depth, which gives this short drink more body than fresh juice alone would.
5. The Southside
50ml Ginsin · 20ml lime juice · 15ml simple syrup · 8 mint leaves
Add everything to a shaker with plenty of ice and shake hard for a full 12 seconds. Double-strain into a chilled coupe, float one mint leaf.
Why it works: the hard shake is the point. It aerates the drink and adds a fine texture that stands in for weight. Under-shake this one and it falls flat — literally.
6. The Bramble
50ml Ginsin · 25ml lemon juice · 15ml simple syrup · 4 blackberries
Shake the first three, strain over a glass packed with crushed ice. Muddle the blackberries with a splash of syrup and spoon them over the top so the colour bleeds down.
Why it works: crushed ice keeps dilution moving as you drink, so the flavour opens rather than flattens. Blackberry seeds and skins add a faint tannic grip — a bitterness that reads as structure.
7. The Gin Sour
50ml Ginsin · 25ml lemon juice · 15ml simple syrup · 20ml aquafaba · pinch of salt
Dry-shake everything without ice for 10 seconds, then add ice and shake again for 10 more. Strain into a coupe and let the foam settle for a moment before drinking.
Why it works: this is the texture lever used directly. Aquafaba — the liquid from a tin of chickpeas — builds a dense foam that gives the drink the weight alcohol would have. The pinch of salt is not optional; it is what makes the citrus taste rounder.
8. The French 75
30ml Ginsin · 15ml lemon juice · 10ml simple syrup · So Jennie Paris Blanc to top
Shake the first three hard with ice, strain into a chilled flute, top with So Jennie. Long lemon twist.
Why it works: the sparkling wine brings acidity, carbonation and a little real vinous depth all at once. Of every drink on this list, this is the one that most convincingly reads as a proper cocktail.
9. The Ginsin Negroni
30ml Ginsin · 30ml Melati Botanical Aperitif · 30ml Espadafor Versin · orange twist
Stir all three with ice for 20 seconds. Strain over one large cube. Express a broad orange peel over the surface and drop it in.
Why it works: a Negroni is equal parts gin, bitter and vermouth — so a real one needs all three, not a gin substitute in a glass on its own. Melati supplies the genuine bitterness, Versin the spiced, herbaceous sweetness. This is the drink most people assume cannot be made at 0.0%, and it is the one that changes minds. Stir it longer than feels right; the dilution is doing structural work.
10. The Martini — the hard one, done properly
60ml Ginsin · 15ml Espadafor Versin · 3 drops saline solution · lemon twist
Freeze the glass and the Ginsin bottle beforehand. Stir with ice for a full 30 seconds. Strain into the frozen glass. Express a lemon peel over the top.
Why it is hard, and why this version works: a Martini is two ingredients and nowhere to hide — it depends almost entirely on the spirit's weight and cold. Without alcohol you have to build both back manually: freeze everything so the cold carries the aromatics, stir long so dilution supplies body, and add saline (dissolve 1g salt in 10ml warm water) so the botanicals lift instead of sitting flat. Skip any of those three and it will disappoint. Do all three and it genuinely works.
The three bottles behind this list
Seven of these drinks need only Ginsin. Two of them — the Negroni and the Martini — need a vermouth, and one needs a bitter aperitif. That is the whole 0.0% bar: a juniper spirit, something spiced and sweet, something genuinely bitter.
