A NEW WAY TO DRINK AT NIMMO
Everyone deserves the choice to have an elevated beverage without sacrificing sleep, health goals, or the fear of waking up with a hangover. With the popularity of non-alcoholic beverages surging all over the world, our team is busy coming up with creative and sophisticated alternatives to your typical alcoholic beverages.
“For our N/A offerings, we try to be as intentional as possible—focusing on hyper-local ingredients and showcasing the incredible purveyors and producers we work with.”
Emilia Jacklin, Operations Manager: Food, Beverage & Accommodation
What Makes a Truly Great Non-Alcoholic Drink?
It takes an immense amount of skill to create a flavourful and interesting spirit-free drink. The bar team aims to capture the texture and astringency that alcohol lends to beverages while avoiding the sweetness overload that alcohol-free drinks can often have. It’s a balancing act of sweet, sour, bitter, and texture.
It’s also important that each offering pairs well with our menu at Little River. The bar team and kitchen team collaborate often, tasting elements of upcoming dishes so they can make the most informed non-alcoholic suggestions. These zero-proof drinks don’t feel like sub-par substitutions. They stand out and shine during cocktail hour and throughout a meal.
Nimmo’s NON-Alcoholic Philosophy
Hyper-Local INgredients
Seasonality and locality are keys to the culinary philosophy at Nimmo. Those priorities don’t change when it comes to crafting non-alcoholic beverages. Many of our free-from drinks highlight local wildflower honey, wild-foraged herbs, and berries from around the resort. The team then takes those wild ingredients and crafts house-made shrubs and even our very own non-alcoholic “Amaro”.
What is the Secret To Complexity?
One way the Nimmo Bay team loves to incorporate complexity into non-alcoholic beverages is through the use of tea. It’s a secret weapon in zero-proof drinks. From Oolong to Lapsang Souchong, the variety of blends to choose from is vast. The tastes you can pull from the teas spans from floral and delicate, to dark and smoky. One of our favourite businesses to support is Westholme Tea Company on Vancouver Island. You’ll find that most of our brews utilize their teas.
Tea also contains tannins. Tannins are the same natural compounds found in wine; they coat your mouth and give texture and structure to a drink. With tea in a drink, you’re getting an extra dimension to the experience, besides just flavour. It can be grippy, silky, velvety, or rough.
DOES THE BAR STOCK Non-Alcoholic SPIRITS?
At Nimmo, we do occasionally use zero-proof spirits in our mocktail menu. However, a lot of what our incredible bar team do is craft drinks that stand-up on their own. No substitutes needed. These creations are a part of the deeper story the team is trying to create through the food and beverage program.
When they do choose to go with a non-alcoholic spirit, these are the brands they recommend. HP Juniper Non-Alcoholic Gin, the HP Agave Non-Alcoholic Tequila, and Lyre’s Non-Alcoholic Italian Spritz.
Inside Nimmo Bay’s Non-Alcoholic Menu
GroundeD
Bright, fun, and a little earthY
Grounded is a celebration of bees, beekeepers, and the forest floor’s unsung workers. The team combines non-alcoholic gin with fresh lemon juice and raw wildflower honey from Black Creek on Vancouver Island. The honey is infused with pine mushrooms, also known as matsutake. These mushrooms are often found in the Pacific Northwest and provide notes of intense maple flavour. They add an earthy depth to the drink and a little spark of woodland magic.
Wildflower
A symphony of florality, fruitiness, and balance
At its heart, Wildflower is a cold brew infusion of Westholme’s “Rest” chamomile-based tea, blended with dried Nootka Rose petals. Nootka Rose is a plant native to BC and named after Nootka Sound, a waterway on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. Nootka Rose has long been used by Indigenous communities for food, medicine, and ceremonies. The petals bring an aromatic sweetness and springtime feel to the drink. We shake in a bit of cherry for a bright pop of tart fruitiness and lemon for acidity. The final touch is to top it with an herbal foam.
RobusT
A smooth, dark sipper with the soul of the forest
To make the Robust, our team harvests cedar boughs just steps from the restaurant. They take the boughs and brew them into a house-made tea. The elixir is full of sweet notes and the essence of juniper. We layer in wild blackcurrants and Lapsang Souchong tea from Westholme, to add bold depth and a gentle smokiness. A hint of lemon and a dash of Angostura bitters rounds it out with brightness and spice.
Splendor
A celebration of the abundance of our forests and fieldS
At the heart of this mocktail is a non-alcoholic amaro syrup. Our team at Nimmo makes it from scratch. This syrup features locally foraged ingredients and Whitaker Farms dandelions. The dandelion leaves, alongside cedar, salal berries, spruce tips, rose petals, various teas, and spices combine to make our custom amaro mix. Emilia Jacklin, the Food, Beverage, & Accommodation Manager carefully crafted this recipe. It rests for eight months to allow the flavours to bloom and mellow out. To make the syrup, the amaro is heated up and sugar is added. The cooking process dealcoholizes it.
The flavour profile is complex and bitter and balanced with lavender. The glass is topped up with 33 Acres Yuzu and Orange Blossom Adaptogenic water for effervescence.
A Nimmo-Inspired Non-Alcoholic Recipe to Make at Home
WILDFLOWER – chamomile, rose, cherry, lemon
Words by: Alexandra Janes
Photos: Jeremy Koreski