Chiang launched her company, Abstinence Spirits, after finding a lack of low-sugar, nonalcoholic drinking options for adults and deciding the world needed sophisticated, flavorful products for mixing mocktails.
This recipe features her Cape Floral—a gin alternative with a slightly bitter herbal profile—and a lemon apertif featuring touches of aloe vera and African wormwood, but readers seeking a boozy version of the Cape Floral Clover Club can substitute regular gin and limoncello as desired!
Ingredients
- 2 ounces Abstinence Cape Floral or other nonalcoholic gin substitute
- 1 ounce Abstinence Lemon Apertif or other nonalcoholic limoncello substitute
- 1 ounce raspberry cordial
- 1/2 ounce, or 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1/2 ounce, or 1 to 2 teaspoons aqua faba
- Fresh raspberries, optional, for garnish
Instructions
- Add all ingredients except the fresh raspberry garnish to a shaker or jar filled with ice. Cover and shake hard for fifteen seconds.
- Strain the liquid into a glass, discard the ice, and add the liquid back to the jar or shaker.
- Cover and shake again to create a smooth, frothy texture.
- Strain the mixture into glass, garnish with raspberries as desired, and serve.
DID YOU KNOW?
In L. M. Montgomery’s 1908 novel set on Prince Edward Island, Anne of Green Gables, Anne serves her best friend, Diana, what she thinks is raspberry cordial, a concentrated drink of raspberries, lemon juice, and sugar, reduced in water. It turns out, though, that a confused young Anne poured Diana three servings of currant wine instead, leading to a rather drunk friend in the story and an official Anne of Green Gables brand of raspberry cordial in real life.
Ranwei Chiang ’06 is the CEO of Abstinence Spirits, nonalcoholic spirits featuring botanicals from South Africa that she launched in 2022. She previously worked at e.l.f. Cosmetics and Angie’s BoomChickaPop. Her roots are in food, though, starting with her on-campus job with Bowdoin Dining, and she later hosted her own pop-up dinner series and worked on a boutique lettuce farm. A government and legal studies and sociology double major at Bowdoin, she earned an MBA from Cornell University.
This story first appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Bowdoin Magazine. Manage your subscription and see other stories from the magazine on the Bowdoin Magazine website.
