The Zero Proof Choice Awards have returned for 2026 as a US-based evaluation platform covering the full breadth of the category — craft zero-proof spirits, dealcoholized wines, functional beverages, and alcohol-free aperitifs. The program is led this year by Derek Brown, one of the more credible voices in the alcohol-free movement, and judged by a nine-person panel of sommeliers, beverage directors, and bar experts, including Zero Proof Nation founder Laura Silverman, author John deBary, and Drink Masters winner Lauren O'Brien.
The stated mission is more interesting than a typical medal roundup. The awards say they want to "decentralize taste" — to recognize that what tastes good reflects contemporary culture and lived experience rather than an inherited hierarchy borrowed from the alcohol industry. The program explicitly frames itself around the many reasons people choose non-alcoholic drinks: health, faith, recovery, pregnancy, or simple preference.
The backdrop is a market that has outrun its own infrastructure. Products have multiplied faster than any trustworthy way to compare them, leaving shoppers to sort real quality from marketing on their own. A credible, independent awards body is one attempt to fill that gap.
The Cr(af)ted Take
The idea worth sitting with here is "judge it on its own terms." For years the highest compliment an alcohol-free drink could earn was that it tasted "just like the real thing." That framing always rigged the game — a copy is judged against the original and loses a little every time. An awards program that evaluates a zero-proof spirit for what it actually is, rather than how faithfully it imitates gin, is the same maturation we keep pointing to: the category growing enough confidence to set its own standard.
A healthy dose of skepticism is still warranted — awards programs can drift toward whoever pays to enter, and a medal is only as good as the palates behind it. But this jury is unusually serious, and the underlying need is real: anyone who has stood in front of a wall of unfamiliar bottles knows how badly the category needs trustworthy guidance. If the Choice Awards help a first-time buyer skip the products that would sour them on alcohol-free entirely, that is a genuine service.
Original reporting: The Zero Proof →