Three Spirit Drinks Review

Welcome to our Three Spirit review!

If you were a non-drinker (or sober curious) person just five years ago, your non-alcoholic options would pretty much be limited to watery 0% beer or boring seltzer and soda.

These options are a far cry from what Three Spirit is doing—since 2018, this UK-based brand has been crafting up adaptogen-loaded, flavor-filled non-alcoholic beverages that are unlike anything the NA space has seen yet. 

Not only are the products amazing, but the brand behind Three Spirit is equally impressive—and we were lucky enough to learn more about the company from co-founder and Head Alchemist, Dash Lilley. 

With reasons including one-of-a-kind non-alcoholic formulations, transparent and ethical ingredient sourcing, and immense value to the consumer looking to drink less, our team awarded Three Spirit with an overall A grade. 

Three Spirit Pros and Cons

Mastering Botanical Alchemy for the Sober Curious Crowd

Back in 2018, husband-and-wife duo Dash Lilley and Tatiana Mercer teamed up with their friend Meeta Gournay with an idea to craft non-alcoholic functional spirits that were actually worthy alternatives to the real deal.

The UK-based trio wanted more options than simply drinking or not drinking—they wanted a beverage that mimicked some of the feelings and taste of alcohol, without the negative effects.

And with a team of food and plant scientists, chemists, bartenders, fermentation experts, and hundreds of iterations of combining various plants and herbs, Three Spirit was born. 

Now, Three Spirit has grown from its flagship beverage—the full-bodied, elevated Social Elixir—to include two more in the spirit lineup (the Nightcap and Livener) and two NA wines, the cheekily-named Blurred Vines. 

As we learned from Dash, he is no stranger to the wellness entrepreneur space, previously starting a coconut water business as well as helping to create an Argentinian tea company dedicated to protecting and reforesting ancient mountainous forests.

With his most recent venture of Three Spirit, Dash and the team set out to find what aspects of alcohol alter mood—and which plants could mimic it by acting on certain neurotransmitters, like dopamine, GABA, or serotonin. 

After all, people don’t always drink alcohol for the taste—there’s a certain feeling they’re after, too.

With Three Spirit, you get to pick which mood state you’re desiring—for example, the hops and ashwagandha in the Nightcap provide soothing relaxation, while the Social Elixir contains damiana, tulsi, and cacao which combine to lift spirits and reduce inhibitions.

(Side note: Fun fact about Dash is that he is a self-proclaimed cacao enthusiast—the guy loves swapping out his morning coffee for hot cacao!)

In contrast to other NA liquors, which attempt to mimic a sans-booze gin, tequila, or whiskey, for example, Three Spirit instead placed their focus on functional and plant-based combinations that are in a class all their own. 

As Dash puts it, “We’re proud to be different and look quite bizarre.” 

And we’re glad for the bizarreness, as Three Spirit has set a new standard for non-alcoholic drinks—they’ve got flavor, function, flair, and feeling—what more could you ask for from a beverage? 

Our Three Spirit Review

Our editorial team grades brands on the following six factors—here’s how Three Spirit scored:

• Quality (A+)
• Transparency (A+)
• Website Experience (A)
• Customer Service (B+)
• Value (A-)
• Brand Value (A+)

These scores balanced out to an overall A grade, with the highest points awarded for stellar ingredient quality and formulation, open-book transparency, and excellent brand value. 

Quality

Quality is not something that Three Spirit is lacking—even when we take into account all of our assessed subcategories, including packaging and labeling, ingredient sourcing and formulation, and certifications. 

All of the Three Spirit products we tried came shipped in securely packed glass bottles.

The bottles prominently display a nutrition facts label, a welcome change from a bottle of regular alcohol, which could contain 0g of sugar or 50g—who knows? 

As far as ingredients go, the quality and formulation could not be better. 

You won’t find any artificial sweeteners, flavors, or sugar alternatives in Three Spirit drinks, as their team of bartenders, phytochemists, and fermentation experts combined their skills to craft these beverages solely from herbs, adaptogens, and plant-based compounds. 

For example, here’s what you’ll find in the Nightcap elixir: “Purified water, Canadian maple syrup, Hüll Melon hops, botanical extracts of; (lemon balm, turmeric root, ashwagandha root, white willow bark, vanilla orchid, valerian root, licorice root, ginger), food acid: lactic acid, tannin infusion, potassium sorbate for freshness, vitamin C (ascorbic acid).” 

As they aren’t using stevia, monk fruit, or other non-sugar sweeteners, the spirit elixirs contain a bit of sugar—4 to 8g per serving—with sources including beet sugar, pomegranate molasses, agave nectar, Canadian maple syrup, or watermelon concentrate. 

Other functional or adaptogenic ingredients featured in the Three Spirit drinks include:

• Valerian root
• Turmeric
• Lemon balm
• Guayusa
• Ginger
• Green tea
• Ginseng
• Lion’s mane mushroom
• Damiana leaf
• And many more

As there are close to 60-plus ingredients between the five beverages, it’s understandable that Three Spirit sources them from all over the world. 

According to Dash,

“We’re really serious about our product development and our liquid credentials. There’s a lot of trial and error, but it’s what I find the most enjoyable—it’s the best part of the job.”

But they prioritize local, ethical, and regeneratively farmed ingredients when possible—for example, they source tea from Henrietta Lovell, “The Tea Lady,” at the Rare Tea Company in London, and get their fruit for the Blurred Vines wine from a regenerative farm in Sussex. 

Three Spirit also has a handful of certifications, including recently becoming Non-GMO Project Verified and gaining their B Corp Certification in 2022.

Overall, we were highly impressed with Three Spirit’s quality on all fronts, earning them an excellent A+ grade here. 

Now, let’s take a closer look at the drinks that Three Spirit currently has to offer. 

Three Spirit Product Catalog

Non-Alcoholic Spirits

In addition to the previously highlighted Nightcap, Three Spirit has the Social Elixir and Livener—both designed for a more upbeat experience.

Non-Alcoholic Wines

Transparency

The alcohol industry is notoriously shady about what goes into their beverages, as they don’t have to disclose ingredients or nutritional information.

Fortunately, Three Spirit is pushing back on this low standard, providing ample information to the consumer about what goes into their drinks. 

In addition to featuring ingredient lists and nutrition facts labels on the bottles, the Three Spirit website is also chock full of information, including details about each functional ingredient.

We also learned much more about ingredient sourcing from Dash, who remarked that they prioritize local farms, but it’s not always possible. 

As he puts it, “We don’t cut corners. We source ingredients from all over the world. We couldn’t make the products we make without being able to harness some of these ingredients that only come from certain continents.”

For example, the guayusa comes from small farming communities in Ecuador that support reforestation and the cacao is from South America, while the manuka leaf used in Blurred Vines is closer to home, sourced from a tea growing company in Cornwall, England.

Regarding manufacturing, you can learn everything you’d want to know on the page, “Making Three Spirit,” with details including how they use various processes like maceration, fermentation, distillation, reverse osmosis, freeze-drying, or ultrasonic extraction to get both the flavor and function out of the plants and herbs.

And at the core of these processes is the concept of botanical alchemy. 

As Three Spirit puts it, “Alchemy is a goal and inspiration at Three Spirit, to create something that has not existed before, to create something new from individual components that have never been combined.” 

For example, the Blurred Vines line starts with the fermentation of grapes and apricots with two yeast strains, creating that funky wine-like flavor profile.

Then, they cold brew tea and botanicals to preserve their delicate flavors and tannins.

Lastly, they add flavor and functionality with ingredients like nootropics, adaptogens, vitamins, minerals, and herbs. 

Each product understandably takes a “crazy amount of iterating,” according to Dash, who leads the in-house R&D team. 

(We even got a sneak peek of his current workstation, where they’re testing out their upcoming non-alcoholic red wine—but it may be a while, as the current Blurred Vines offerings took 18 months to bring to life.) 

Transparency also encompasses learning more about the brand and the people behind it—Three Spirit offers plenty of information on their “Meet the Alchemists” page.

Lastly, they’re transparent with their shipping and return policies, which were easy to find on the site.

Website Experience

With a minimalist design, functional features, and ample educational material, the Three Spirit site earns a solid A grade. 

The resources about ingredient benefits, sourcing, and manufacturing were much appreciated, as was the quiz to find your perfect beverage match. 

As there are only five products—with various bundling options—the e-commerce experience was simple and straightforward, with no issues found. 

We also enjoyed looking through the blog and collection of mocktail recipes, which are creative and delicious-sounding.

Customer Service

Three Spirit provides four direct lines of communication—text, live chat, email, and phone.

However, no responses were immediate—each reply was approximately three business hours, which certainly isn’t terrible, but typically a live chat is designed to be a quicker option. 

On the plus side, the responses we did receive were thorough, friendly, and extremely helpful. 

Lastly, their shipping and return policies are just okay, with a 30-day return window for unopened products in their original packaging.

Although we understand the health and safety reasons for not accepting returns on opened products, a gold standard is a money-back guarantee. 

Overall, we like the wide range of available customer service channels but would love quicker responses and a more generous return policy, leading us to award Three Spirit with a B+ in this category. 

Value

Three Spirit drinks are certainly not inexpensive, at $39 per spirit bottle and $27 per wine bottle. 

However, our team agreed that the high quality of ingredients, focus on fair pay and local/ethical sourcing, and immense value to people looking for flavorful and mood-altering NA drinks made up for the higher price point. 

Although there aren’t really any brands that can be directly compared to Three Spirit, the closest option would be Seedlip. 

For comparison, the Three Spirit Nightcap is $39 for a 16.9oz bottle, which comes out to $2.30 per ounce.

Conversely, Seedlip Spice 94 is $32 for a 23.7oz bottle or $1.35 per ounce. 

However, Seedlip mainly utilizes fruits, vegetables, and herbs in their non-alcoholic blends, while Three Spirit incorporates more specialty ingredients, like adaptogens and nootropics. 

Overall, we think that the price is not outrageous, and you pay for the elevated quality—to learn more about their price justification, check out this article. 

Brand Value

This was an almost-immediate A+, as we considered Three Spirit’s incredible innovation, scientific research, benefit to public nutrition, and disruption to a stagnant industry. 

Three Spirit is the only brand making these types of functional and mood-changing non-alcoholic beverages, providing great value to people looking to drink less but not miss out on the flavor or feeling that comes with alcohol. 

And as drinking alcohol is simply not healthy, Three Spirit certainly elevates public nutrition—even just by switching out one boozy drink for a Three Spirit cocktail or glass of NA wine, you’re doing your physical and mental health a favor. 

Three Spirit also is highly focused on sustainability, partnering with the UK charity DIRT to help regenerate soil by supporting the biodynamic farming movement.

Plus, they work with charities that remove ocean plastic and help to plant mangroves—for every bottle of Three Spirit you buy, one mangrove tree will be planted in either Madagascar, Mozambique, or Kenya, and every Collection sold will help remove 1 kilogram of plastic from the ocean. 

Lastly, they have an abundance of scientific street cred to back them up, with food scientists, Ph.D.s, fermentation experts, and phytochemists on the team. 

They even have a published scientific paper on myrcene—a compound found in hops and featured in the Nightcap elixir—led by Professor Michael Heinrich of UCL and Dr. Shelini Surendran from Surrey University. 

Overall, it’s safe to say that Three Spirit has incredible brand value, leading to an A+ grade here.

Our Experience with Three Spirit

Our team thoroughly enjoyed all Three Spirit products—at Expo West, we sampled all three elixirs and we were able to try both of the NA wines at home. 

We particularly enjoyed Spark, their pink and bubbly NA wine that has a little caffeine boost—for a weekend brunch, a glass of Spark would eliminate the need for both champagne and coffee in one go.

The taste of Spark is on the fruity side—but not sweet—and has a slight bite from the cayenne pepper that lends to the complexity of the wine. 

We also loved that the cold brew botanical blend of teas contributed light acidity and tannins reminiscent of real wine.

The Sharp wine is also delicious, providing extremely complex flavors that you just don’t get from a glass of white wine—the unique addition of jalapeno added a subtle spice that was not unwelcomed. 

However, Sharp was definitely best on the first day—although they recommend drinking it within 48 hours, we had a better experience upon first opening it.

On the second day, it tasted much flatter—even though it’s not considered a bubbly wine, it still has a bit of fizz to it—and the flavors seemed slightly dulled. 

Lastly, we sampled the Nightcap elixir—as the name suggests, it’s designed to replace an alcoholic before-bed drink with a better-for-you beverage.

We tried it simply poured over ice—similar to whiskey—and absolutely loved the complex, woody, and slightly spicy flavors.

Two prominent ingredients that stood out were the licorice and ginger—both of which “got you” in the back of the throat. 

However, neither of those flavors were overpowering—as someone who does not like licorice, we still heartily enjoyed this drink (and slept better, too!). 

Overall, Three Spirit drinks are highly recommended by our team.

Three Spirit FAQs

Final Thoughts

Overall, Three Spirit receives a solid A rating with high points awarded for impressive quality, transparent practices, and stellar brand value. 

The only areas of improvement would be their return policy and price point—which is still great considering the quality of ingredients going into them. 

As Dash eloquently summarized, “We felt that people drink alcohol not just for flavor; not just for effect—it’s both. It’s this wonderful experience; it should be a pleasurable experience, and it’s a powerful experience when you think about how culturally significant alcohol is in dictating our social etiquette and behavior—how we socialize, how we drop our barriers with one another. So we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could address those problems in a non-alcoholic beverage?’”

And we’re so glad they did, as Three Spirit is a truly impressive brand, and we can’t wait to see what they come up with next.