Roots Divino

The brand was founded in 2013 by brothers Manos and Nikolas Smyrlakis on the Greek island of Lesvos in the northeast Aegean. Their family had been distilling on the island for 150 years, and the brothers drew on that heritage to create something with genuine provenance. The name itself tells you where they've come from: "di vino" means wine-based, and that distinction matters. Most alcohol-free spirits start from scratch with water, botanical extracts, and clever chemistry. Roots Divino starts with wine.

The production method follows a two-stage process: Greek herbs and botanicals are infused into sweetened wine in the traditional vermouth manner, then the alcohol is removed by reverse osmosis. What remains is botanically complex, wine-textured, and genuinely vermouthy rather than a facsimile of one. The inspiration traces back further than the distillery itself, to Hippocrates and the herb-infused wines of ancient Greece that are considered the earliest precursors to modern vermouth.

Two expressions are available. The Rosso is built around bitter orange, gentian, and wormwood, giving it the bittersweet, slightly medicinal character you'd expect from a quality Italian-style red vermouth. The Bianco leans fresher and more citrus-forward, with rosemary, thyme, and wormwood giving a herbal, slightly sour profile. Both are low calorie and packaged in standard 700ml bottles, so they work as direct substitutes in any cocktail or aperitivo setting.

Roots Divino has picked up recognition in international competitions, and it has found distribution in specialist alcohol-free retailers across the UK and Europe. In the UK it's available through Amazon and The Whisky Exchange, as well as various specialist AF online shops. It's not a supermarket fixture, so it sits in the premium end of the market where the audience is specifically seeking out quality AF alternatives rather than stumbling across them.

The vermouth format is well-suited to the alcohol-free space. Vermouth is already lower in alcohol than spirits and traditionally served in smaller measures, so the leap to zero-proof feels less dramatic. Roots Divino leans into this logic and produces something that holds its own neat over ice, as a spritz, or in a Negroni-style build alongside other AF spirits. The Mediterranean botanical character makes them particularly good with food in the aperitivo tradition.

For a relatively young brand from a small island in the Aegean, the reach has been notable. Distribution into the UK and US specialist market from a Greek producer is not a straightforward path, and it says something about the quality of what they've made that it's found an audience outside Greece.