Ingredients
- 2 ozAlcohol-Free Rum
- 1 ozFresh lime juice
- ½ ozSimple syrup
- 8–10 leavesFresh mint
- To topClub soda
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How to Make It
- Gently muddle the mint leaves with the simple syrup in the bottom of a tall glass.
- Add the lime juice and Alcohol-Free Rum.
- Fill the glass with ice and top with club soda.
- Give it a gentle stir and garnish with a mint sprig and lime wheel.
Why This Works
The mojito is a masterclass in aroma. The mint is muddled gently — pressed, not pulverized — because the goal is to release its essential oils without tearing the leaves into bitter fragments. Most of what you experience as mint flavor is actually fragrance rising from the glass as you sip.
Lime and sugar form the drink's sweet-tart spine, in nearly equal measure. That two-to-one ratio of lime to syrup keeps the drink crisp; a sweeter mix would smother the mint and flatten the rum.
Club soda does two jobs at once: it lengthens the drink into something you can linger over, and its carbonation lifts the mint and lime aromatics to the surface with every bubble. It's why a mojito smells as good as it tastes — and why it's built in the glass, never shaken.
The Alcohol-Free Swap
Alcohol-Free Rum captures the sugarcane sweetness and warm molasses finish that makes a mojito unmistakably itself.