Cheers to Your Health and Mother Earth

By Cheryl Mandell

 

Living in paradise often makes it easy for people to get caught up in island time. For many, the allure of perpetual summer includes boozy beverages and happy hours, which can be a temporary escape from the grind but can wreak havoc on your health in the long run.

Gather Beverage Company in Fort Myers has found a way to bottle that island vibe in a much healthier way, offering non-alcoholic beverages that bring refreshment and promote wellness.

Fort Myers native Amber Cebull knows what it takes to craft a great drink. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Cebull set out on a new course personally and professionally. She took her years of hospitality, marketing and brewing experience to a new level and joined the functional beverage movement. After experimenting with herbal tinctures, selling functional teas and using non-alcoholic spirits in her newly crafted cocktails, Gather Beverage Company was born.

These drinks are more than the standard mocktail. Gather Beverage Company uses functional herbs and adaptogens to support the body’s ability to cope with stress and help with overall well-being. Botanical ingredients are the foundation for the clean, fresh flavor found in each elixir.

“Adaptogens are herbs and botanicals that basically help your body better adapt to stress,” said Cebull. “Our elixirs all have different functions based on the adaptogens in them.”

The award-winning lemon lavender botanical elixir, named Let It Be, contains lavender, chamomile, butterfly pea flower (which naturally provides the purple color), lemon balm, cardamom and other herbs that have been widely studied to promote calm. This elixir won a silver medal in the 2023 LA Spirit Awards and provides an excellent base for any cocktail. Suggested pairings include lemonade, club soda, ginger beer, or ginger lemon kombucha.

Gather Beverage Company’s elixirs are crafted by co-owner and veteran chef Erik Salas, using 100% organic, whole ingredients brewed in small batches and bottled by hand. Cebull and Salas refuse to use preservatives or artificial colors. The bold colors and flavors are all from natural herbs. The brand also offers broad spectrum cannabidiol (CBD) as an option in some of their beverages.

“Erik was a chef for 20 years, and he had all of the flavor-pairing knowledge,” said Cebull. “I had some insight into what I wanted to do, but largely, he is the guy behind all of the flavors.”

“It’s also about how you treat the ingredients,” said Salas, who came to Florida from southern California in 2017. “It’s not just as straightforward as throwing everything into a pot and putting it in a bottle. Some of our elixirs go through four stages.”

Gather Beverage Company’s Unthinkable sweet smoked oak elixir won a gold medal in the 2024 World Alcohol-Free Awards and was a bronze medal winner in the Alternative Drinks segment at the 2024 International Wine & Spirits Competition. Unthinkable took three years to develop. It ages over a month on bourbon barrel and smoked oak chips and contains functional ingredients like lion’s mane mushroom and ashwagandha, an ancient herb used to reduce stress, inflammation and anxiety. The cherry, orange peel, wildflower honey and other flavors make Unthinkable the closest spirit-free alternative to an Old Fashioned.

Gather Beverage Company has provided its non-alcoholic, or NA, drinks for some recent weddings, including a high-end wedding in Austin, Texas, whose Instagram videos featuring the beverages went viral.

Cebull uses social media to post recipes, news and the weekly tasting room schedule. Gather’s small oasis of a tasting room is tucked away off Metro Parkway in Fort Myers where customers can try the brews with full-spectrum CBD and CBD-free options. They offer weekend tastings, and by appointment in the summer months.

Local social spots such as Chartreuse Craft Cocktail Lounge and The Rabbit Hole Kava Bar in Bonita Springs sell Gather beverages, as well as Kava Luv Social Lounge in Naples, among other Southwest Florida hotspots and in bottle shops around the country. Gather beverages may also be purchased online.

Possibly even more impressive than this small business’ enthusiasm for the craft and dedication to personal health is the company’s commitment to sustainability. Brewing in small batches without industrialized bulk waste, Gather Beverage Company also recycles its bottles locally. Gather’s environmentally conscious actions don’t end there – Cebull and Salas compost the herbs they use and source their ingredients from organic farms. According to the owners, their focus isn’t on their competitors as much as it is on the state of the world.

The non-alcoholic beverage and functional elixir movement is making waves. Lee Health’s Healthy Life Center at Coconut Point has been hosting mocktail events for the past three years, featuring non-alcoholic beverages and a demo-based nutritional showcase in a casual kitchen setting.

Lee Health Personal Health Advocate Jamie Hoover hosts these events alongside Community Outreach Registered Dietician Aikaterina Galeos. Hoover likes to ask her guests, “How many of you like alcohol? How many of you think alcohol likes you?” As a health advocate for the Estero community, Hoover enjoys promoting the benefits of delicious beverages minus the booze.

“I don’t think anyone would disagree that it’s a great thing to decrease the amount of alcohol that you’re consuming in your life,” Cebull said. “But within that movement, and what I would say Gather is more focused on, is wellness within the non-alcoholic beverage movement because a lot of the spirit replacements are very commercialized, and not a lot of attention is paid to the craft of the beverage itself or the sustainability.”