SCRANTON, Pa. — It might surprise you to learn the owner of a bar doesn't drink alcohol.
Then again, there are a lot of things that might surprise you at Noir Dark Spirits in Scranton.
"To get this drink, you have to confess a sin," bartender Morgan Rondinella explained as she served a specialty cocktail called "The Confession," made with tequila, elderflower, and a red wine floater.
Drinking at this Penn Avenue establishment is all about the experience, whether your cocktail is bubbling or surrounded by smoke coming out of a skull.
Owner Josh Balz wanted to make that experience available to everyone — designated drivers, people participating in "Dry January," or people who don't drink at all.
That's why almost every drink on their cocktail menu can be made alcohol-free.
"We have such crazy drinks on our menu that we didn't want to have, 'Oh, you can get this small drink or this little thing.' We wanted to be able to offer all of our drinks which have your frills, your fun, your awesomeness. And you can get them just basically how they taste, if you're a sober person or not," Balz said.
The mocktails are made with zero-proof alcohol. The bar is stocked with whiskey, gin, rum, and vodka alternatives.
"It is as close to alcohol as you can get without actually drinking alcohol," Rondinella said. "They can have the taste of liquor, but there's no 'Hey, I have work tomorrow. I need to be up.' There's no 'or.' It's fun and work."
"Even if you also just want to hold a beer, a nice glass bottle, we have our locally brewed Parlor root beer which is awesome. So, you can feel like when you were a kid and you wanted to be cool like your dad, you'd just always hold a root beer," Balz said.
These options are popular for people ditching alcohol for "Dry January," but Noir Dark Spirits offers them year-round.
"We honestly just didn't want to leave anybody out. And if anybody that's doing Dry January, or just in general, 12 months out of the year, just wants to come hang out and have an experience, we wanted to be that place, whether you're a drinker or a non-drinker."
More and more people hop on the Dry January trend every year. According to food and drink research firm CGA, 35 percent of legal adults skipped alcohol for January last year, up from 21 percent in 2019.
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