This is an excerpt from the NashVillager newsletter, your human-powered daily guide to Nashville. Click here to subscribe.
Dry January is the increasingly popular practice of giving up alcoholic beverages for the first month of the year (perhaps after having one or five too many on New Year’s Eve). While there’s no arguing the physical and mental benefits of such a cleanse, it’s often the social part that starts to make the commitment more of a challenge.
Because let’s be real about this for a moment: Nashville is a drinking city.
So what do you do when you’d like to take a pause — for a month, for the year, forever — in a place like this?
This Is Nashville, in its early days, thankfully dedicated an entire episode of the show to this very subject.
Modified menus
Something that has continued to change in the time since that 2022 TIN is the availability of non-alcoholic options.
The closest comparison I’ve seen is what has happened with plant-based diets in society. While most places could still offer several more veg-friendly dishes in my opinion, we are leagues away from the house salad with oil and vinegar days of going out to eat as a vegan. Similarly, a Shirley Temple may have once been the go-to “virgin drink” at an establishment, but there is now often a dedicated section of the menu for mocktails, ranging in flavor profiles and inclusion of no-alcohol liquors or not.
We are at the start of a drink renaissance right now I’m willing to bet, only bolstered by the fact that Gen Z is drinking alcohol way less than past generations. So, really, my mixology skills should focus less on investing in a bar cart and more about stocking my fridge with fun fruits and juices. (Right?)
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM