Ireland’s only booze-free bar: Full-on cocktails for grown-ups

Six months in, Ireland's only nonalcoholic bar seems to be doing extremely well. Anna Walsh of the Virgin Mary, on Capel Street in Dublin, is very happy with her new menu, which includes an expanded list of alcohol-free beers and a range of new cocktails.

So who goes to an alcohol-free bar? “To be honest, we get a real mix of people,” says Walsh, the bar manager, “from early 20s to 50s and beyond. Most first-timers are open-minded and positive about the idea. I find myself engaging with people a lot more; they are interested in our story, and we in theirs.”

The bar is not big, seating about 30 people, including in the country’s only alcohol-free snug. As well as the beers, the Virgin Mary has a small selection of wines, including Torres’ Natureo range and Freixenet, but the real excitement is in the cocktails. Forget about anything sweet and sickly: these are full-on, full-flavoured, grown-up drinks. I would be happy to drink these all evening. My favourite is the Old Flame, a bitter-sweet combination of Seedlip Grove 42, Æcorn Aromatic, raspberry, Sanbitter Rosso and soda.

“We try to create interesting drinks; we are not always trying to mimic alcoholic drinks,” says Walsh, who spent years creating craft cocktails. The bar was set up by Oisín Davis and Vaughan Yates, veterans in the drinks business and previously partners in Poacher’s Tonic Water.

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The soft-drinks market is booming, with new drinks and mixers appearing all the time. Seedlip may have led the way, but plenty of others have followed, and the Virgin Mary tends to receive them first. So why not drop in for a tasty alcohol-free cocktail?