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SMAGAZINEOFFICIAL.COM FOOD + DRINK
Another Round
Ghia founder Mélanie Masarin is leading the
zero-proof charge with her growing line of alcohol-
free offerings that don’t hold back on taste.
By Sumiko Wilson
S ix years ago, Mélanie Masarin got tired of sparkling water. Having just
left her role at Glossier, where she led offline and experiential strategy,
she was visiting Milan for design week—she was also newly sober with
very limited beverage options. “I complained quite a bit, apparently,”
Masarin admits over Zoom. Finally, a friend suggested she create her own
drink. “I didn’t even understand what he meant at first, but it was in the
back of my mind for the rest of the trip,” she recalls. When she returned to
New York City, where she lived at the time, she began researching alcohol-
free beverage brands and found that many of them sought to mimic
specific spirits.
But she didn’t long for the taste of alcohol, she missed the experience.
“I was never a big drinker. I think that the ritual of the drink was more
crucial than alcohol itself,” she says. “That’s when I realized that there
was a bit of a disconnect.” Growing up between Lyon and the South of
France, Masarin’s parents always ended their day with a drink of some
sort. “Aperitivo was almost every night in my house growing up,” recalls
Masarin, who now calls Los Angeles home. “Maybe that’s how I ended
up here.”
In June 2020, she launched Ghia, a line of non-alcoholic, sugar-
free beverages inspired by the summers she spent with family near the
Mediterranean. The brand’s first offering was an aperitif with a bright,
bitter base and hints of citrus. The following year, they expanded their
lineup with canned sparkling options featuring notes such as ginger, lime
and sumac.
The brand’s moniker rolls off the tongue with inextricable exuberance—
Ghia sounds similarly festive to toasts like “l’chaim” or “santé.” This is
particularly apt, as its mission is to drive a wedge between celebration
and alcohol.
“When I was thinking of starting the company, I realized that if I was
going out to dinner with friends, often I would hear people say, ‘I don’t
want to eat out because I don’t want to drink,’ ” Masarin recalls. “But why
do these things have to be mutually exclusive?” The brand is decidedly not
preachy or anti-alcohol. Instead, Ghia was created to decentre booze, as a
counterpoint to zero proof options being an afterthought.
“I came up bartending at a time when ‘mocktail’ often meant ‘Make me
something that looks like what I usually drink because I don’t want anyone
to ask me why I’m not drinking,’ ” says Ohio-based bar consultant and
podcast host Joshua Gandee. On his podcast No Proof, guests unfurl their
relationship to alcohol. “Somewhere along the way it felt like bartenders,
owners, and management forgot that bars and restaurants are social
gathering places and not just places to drink alcohol and order food to
wash down with alcohol.”
We appear to be inching away from that. With Ghia and like-minded
brands such as Kin Euphorics, De Soi, Edna’s, and Seedlip more
readily available on shelves and at restaurants, non-alcoholic options
are becoming more sophisticated and diverse. Earlier this year, Statistics
Canada reported that alcohol sales went down by 1.2 per cent between
2021 and 2022—the first decline since 2014 and the largest drop in more
than a decade. In 2023, NielsenIQ reported that sales for non-alcoholic
beer, wine, and spirits grew by 35 per cent.
Gandee attributes this shift to the pandemic. “We were able to see what
was of most importance to us, and our general health became placed
under a microscope,” he explains. “Getting through the pandemic poised
us to be more focused on the future and the micro-changes we can make
that buy us more time as we look ahead.”
Four years in, Ghia is making an impact where Masarin least expected
it. At the start of this year, her parents participated in Dry January. While
they’ve always been supportive, this was unimaginable when she first
launched. “They were supportive of me, but they didn’t understand the
concept,” she adds with a laugh. “I’m very pleasantly surprised.”