Anthea Non-Alcoholic

Raise a glass to the 2025 Label & Litho Drink Champion, Anthea Non-Alcoholic, celebrating a sophisticated, flavour-filled approach to alcohol-free beverages.

What does pink taste like?

If by some miracle—supernatural, synesthetic, or something else entirely—you happen to know the answer, do you then back yourself to concoct it? And in less than a year from an initial whiteboard session, sweep accolades across the country?

Meet Anthea. A starlet of the non-alcoholic beverage market and the namesake of an ancient deity known for love, nature, and bringing beauty and abundance to earth through flowers. Literally ‘blooming’ in Greek, her essence has been bottled and brought to life by a trio of modern creative forces, balancing their specific skills and strengths as Dionysus, Athena, and Apollo might have all those millennia ago.

Seasoned winemaker Darren Webster and brand manager Olivia Fly, the young visionary behind steeping the project’s soul in mythos, were brought together by industry expert Ray Nicholls. Maintaining a somewhat removed, directional role, Ray offers an Apollonian oversight as the young creatives drive innovation, turning the market on its head. 

Only, when Ray and Darren first courted a working relationship, the latter had no pining for great disruption. He was simply looking for the next challenge after a decade crafting wines in California and New Zealand.

“Darren joined us when we were recruiting for someone in the technical and operating side of another business,” recalls Ray. “In part of that introductory conversation, he told me there was a lot of opportunity to do great things with what we were good at.”

Great things proved something of a premonition; with Ray's support, Darren and Olivia led Anthea through an inaugural year worthy of its own Iliad. At the 2025 Outstanding NZ Food Producer Awards, Anthea became our overall Label & Litho Drinks Champion with two gold and three silver medals across their spritz selection. Blossoming among these five products is the heroine of this budding story—their Blush Botanic, otherwise known as Anthea's answer to pink.

“The beginning of that one was actually a bit led by consumers,” explains Ray. “We got the rest of the range up and running, then someone said, ‘You need something that's a bit pink, you need to have a rosé analogue’. And so we started out with an exercise about imagining, ‘What does pink taste like?’”

For artisan Darren, the answer to any Anthean bloom lies in a meticulous process of flavour development. “The starting point was looking at what kind of flavour attributes we want in it,” he explains. “What kind of notes I want to come through, how I want to combine them, and doing a bit of research into what botanical and edible elements would produce those.” 

This process is conceived partly out of frustration with the de-alcoholised wine market. "De-alcoholising strips out most of the flavours and a lot of the complexity," he notes. "Why remove things when, instead, you can build up a product with some level of complexity as an alternative?"

Each botanical ingredient arrives from its optimal growing region before undergoing extraction at their Riverside facility. “They come from the right place,” is how Ray puts it. Whether that's Hungary, China, or South Africa—the key qualifying question is always “Where's the best place to grow them?”

"Using botanicals, each of them has its own flavour profile and complexity,” adds Darren. “When you extract a flavour from each botanical element, it adds something of its own. When you extract them all together, you're producing a completely different, more complex product than what you would get by just adding a bunch of flavours on top of each other.” 

As such, ‘pink’, for Darren, is notes of strawberries and cream, a botanical blend of Schisandra berry, rosemary, lemon balm and thyme, and, ultimately, a flavour profile that our judges found irresistible. In fact, they were in love, noting an “intense, lengthy aftertaste”, rewarding a thoroughly well-made, refreshing drink that boasts broad appeal, with an accolade worthy of its quality.

“You can really just maximise quality and just pinpoint exactly what you want,” affirms Darren, who believes this is what helps Anthea produce a valid substitute for wine without compromise and contrasts this approach to winemaking. “[In the wine industry] they have this saying, ‘you start off with the best that grapes can offer and then your job is to just not f**k it up too much.’” Conversely, to create, rather than destroy, is closely tied to Anthea’s identity.

Corroborating Darren’s enthusiasm, the hospitality sector has begun to recognise Anthea as a bona fide substitute. Her essence has been poured at venues throughout Auckland and beyond since August 2024, earning praise from patrons and veteran bar managers alike. This reception reflects a broader shift in drinking culture that the team recognised early. 

The concept of being ‘sober curious’—questioning one's relationship with alcohol—has moved from niche wellness circles into mainstream conversation. Acknowledging that alcohol is often a normal part of our social interactions, Anthea is an antidote to the unwelcome pressure to drink. Created as a supportive companion for a lifestyle with less alcohol, the brand reflects the core ideals of the goddess it honours—love of nature, love of others, and love of self—by providing a sophisticated, uncompromising beverage for “moments you spend nurturing connections with people who matter in your life, without negative external influence”.

"The consumer need is colossal and the satisfaction with the current offering is very small," Ray observes. Walk into any restaurant today and ask what's available for the non-drinker at the table. "They shuffle their feet and they look at the floor and they go, ‘Oh, well, we've got some soft drinks and we've got some juices.’ Sometimes they'll mumble an apology for a non-alcoholic wine, but generally they don't have a strong outstanding offer.” That is, until now.

Ray maintains that Anthea is "a young person's story." While Darren was busy conjuring their award-winning spritz selection—gold for Bush, gold for Blanc, silver for their Passion & Elderflower, Blackcurrant & Lavender and Goji & Rosehip respectively—Olivia, at just 24, took the lead on design and story. And although her tactful alignment with the eponymous deity actually emerged after product development was well underway, the connection feels increasingly fateful. Ray remains full of praise for this stroke of brilliance, "Everyone who looks at the branding asks me, ‘Did we pay some professional agency 100 grand for it?'"

Contemplating the challenges of a first year in business, he admits he and his team were “very ambitious and impatient.” For example, they aimed for full operation within 12 months, and although this proved another instance of success, it was the pathways Ray has carved from decades in the industry that helped Anthea navigate its infancy. 

Such guidance includes playing to their strengths during what is a crucial growth phase. While their processes are meticulously controlled—they handle the herbal extraction and warehousing in-house—the bottling and canning are outsourced, mitigating heavy capital investment and allowing the team to focus on their "superpower." Similarly, they have big aspirations for e-commerce, but will take their time wading into this world, as they, admittedly, still have a lot to learn.

The bigger picture involves Anthea venturing to the US, a market that will support greater scaling. However, they will have to embark on this journey without the deft touch of Olivia. She has already set sail for distant shores, leaving the Anthea family to travel the world—perhaps fitting she should now undertake an odyssey of her own.

Find where to buy and learn more about the Anthea Non-Alcoholic story here.