Mercer isn’t a zealot – she still likes a G&T. And for much of her career she has reported on cocktail culture. But now she runs the company she co-founded called Three Spirit. It’s one of a new, rapidly expanding sector in the drinks industry: alcohol replacements. Unlike alcohol-free drinks – the same flavour as beers and wines but without the alcohol – these cut their own path on flavour but use a blend of various sometimes exotic ingredients: the likes of botanicals, mushrooms, cacao, broad-spectrum hemp and various berries, to also be what Three Spirit describes as “mood making”.

“I’m not sure anyone really wants an alcohol-free G&T, because we drink alcohol among other reasons to decompress, to lift our mood, sometimes to just feel like we’re not missing out,” says Mercer. “And I think it’s OK to be honest about that.”

Indeed, while the so-called “functional drinks” sector has, to date, explored the wellness space – offering all sorts of natural “magic potions” to, for example, aid recovery after workouts – now it’s moving into the social space: offering something akin to the effects of alcohol, but without the price to pay next morning. While this is leading to distribution problems – it’s not clear where these drinks fit in yet – it looks to be a growth market, suggests Mercer, with CBD drinks brands Trip and Aplós; and Kin Euphorics, co-founded by model Bella Hadid, all making moves.

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“People are increasingly eager to go back to nature and revisit the way we think about functional botanicals, as well as their benefits. In some ways this is about revisiting ancient, natural remedies but doing it in a format that is socially acceptable and relevant to the way we live today,” argues Aplós’ co-founder, Emily Onkey, who calls what she makes a “proxy spirit”.

There are other approaches to developing such drinks too. David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College, University of London, also runs Gabalabs, named after gamma-aminobutyric acid (gaba), the building block of the brain’s primary inhibitory neurotransmitters. Much of Nutt’s work focuses on understanding how the brain’s inhibitory circuits work, and latterly how to toy with them to induce the same sense of calm and relaxation we get from booze. Indeed, it was Nutt who provided the first proof of alcohol’s stimulation of the gaba receptors.

He’s currently working to manufacture up to 13 molecules that, his research shows, interact with the right brain receptors to give that chilled feeling but with none of the toxicity, and has used this research to launch Sentia – a drink based on herbal extracts – and is in the process of developing what he calls Alcarelle.

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This – a spin on Canderel, the molecule developed to give the pleasure of sweetness without the calories – will, he says, be a tasteless liquid, licensed as an ingredient and, assuming the science works out, should inspire a whole new generation of non-alcoholic drinks that don’t forego the appealing sense of decompression. Strangely, some have claimed that Nutt is trying to create not a safer alternative to alcohol but a new recreational drug – suggesting a certain denial as to why people drink alcohol.

“The fact is that alcohol is just a very easy, very big, well-established market and there are still people in it who don’t want to disrupt it,” Nutt argues. “But attitudes to alcohol are changing, in part because nobody now disputes its health harms. The problem is that, while alcohol has always had a special place in culture, in ceremonies, in many religions, it has also long been divisive. There’s a tendency to polarise thinking around alcohol such that we haven’t been encouraged to think there might be a third way. But the possibility is there.”

So far none of these drink options are matching alcohol for its effect drink for drink, which perhaps explains why, according to Onkey, the vast majority of her customers also drink alcohol. “Many proxy spirits have a hard time delivering a one-to-one replication of the sensory experience of their alcoholic counterpart,” she concedes, adding that this isn’t really the point: “[Consumers] are just seeking to drink a bit less alcohol without giving up the relaxing, uplifting feeling they crave”.

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Nutt says a couple of glasses of Sentia can be compared to the pleasantly tipsy feeling felt maybe after one or two glasses of wine – “it makes you a little slack around the jaw, a little bit chatty, mellow,” he says – and that, crucially, drinking more Sentia in any sitting doesn’t increase this sensation. These aren’t drinks you can get drunk on, no matter how hard you try.

“Do [these kinds of drinks] compare to drinking a bottle of wine for their effect? No,” stresses Mercer. She was recently contacted by a potential customer asking which Three Spirit product she would recommend for her husband, who worked his way through a bottle of bourbon most evenings. Mercer had to let her down. “These [functional drinks] are just another option on the table that can help you gently unwind,” she says. “Expectations should not be overegged”.