WISH LIST, RITUAL ZERO PROOF

To eat too, and have adventures. We like to wrestle with our kids and climb mountains. We like to make art and we like to stay out too late laughing. We, by the way, are three friends, two of whom share a bed and a child. We're passionate foodies and damn good cooks, so Ritual started in our kitchens.

The goal wasn't to replace liquor —bite your tongue! — but to add a new tool to our cocktail kit. Another way to mark a moment.

Simple enough, right? Yeah, not so much. It took more than a year and hundreds of iterations to perfect our recipes.

We learned how to blend jambu and prickly ash, how to extract the essence of blue agave, reduce the oil in juniper and heighten the perfume of pine. We taste-tested vanilla from Madagascar against vanilla from China. We sought guidance from master chefs and held tasting sessions for Chicago's best bartenders.

We weren't interested in a glass of "something." We're not interested in new-age goop that defies explanation, or fancy spa water that bears no resemblance to liquor.

We weren’t satisfied until it tasted and smelled and felt like the real thing. A new way to make an old favorite (or an Old Fashioned.)