Monday Non-Alcoholic Gin Review

Best first drink

Start Monday gin in a G&T before judging it anywhere else. Use a good tonic, plenty of ice, lime, and a real garnish. If that drink does not work for you, the bottle probably will not become a regular buy.

Monday is one of the more straightforward brands in the zero-proof spirits world. The current lineup runs through gin, whiskey, mezcal, and rum, and the brand positions all of them as bottles for classic cocktails rather than precious sipping. That is also the right way to judge the gin. Monday Gin is built in a London dry direction, with juniper, bitter lemon, grapefruit, coriander, and a little heat on the finish. It wants tonic, citrus, and ice, not reverent neat sipping.

That bottle-first, cocktail-first approach is really the whole point of Monday. The whiskey page leans into butterscotch, caramel, roasted coffee, and molasses for Old Fashioneds and Whiskey Sours. The mezcal page leans into smoke, agave, pepper, and citrus for Margaritas and Palomas. So when you pick up the gin, the expectation should be similar: this is a house bottle for mixed drinks, not a contemplative zero-proof spirit for a small neat pour.

The gin bottle makes the most sense if your default serve is still tonic, soda, citrus, or a cooler-weather rosemary-and-lemon kind of highball. It has enough juniper shape to taste familiar, but it usually reads better in a long drink than in anything that depends on weight or oily texture. In other words, it works when the drink still has bubbles, chill, and dilution on its side.

Monday also tends to work better for shoppers who want a recognizable substitute bottle rather than a more abstract botanical spirit. If Seedlip or Ghia tastes too far from the old ritual, Monday is easier to slot into the drinks you already know how to make.