What’s the ‘zebra striping’ drinking trend - and why should you try it?

Saturday, 31 May 2025

Been zebra striping lately? You probably have but didn’t realise it. Zebra striping is the ‘new’ trend of alternating between drinking an alcoholic and a no or low-alcohol drink. (The inverted commas are because many of us have been doing this for decades.)

A recent study found 25% of Brits now zebra stripe at every visit to the pub. It’s particularly popular among young people, with 78% of 18-24-year-olds reporting this is the way they socialise. Moderation, it seems, is the new black with three quarters of all Brits reporting that they have reduced their alcohol consumption to promote their physical and mental wellbeing and save their hard-earned pounds.

The science is right behind zebra striping. As most of us know, alcohol functions as a diuretic (hence the long queues for pub loos), so we need to keep our fluids up when drinking it. Dehydration delivers most hangover symptoms; the alternate stripe will help keep us hydrated.

Alternating with non-alcoholic drinks will also slow down the rate at which you consume alcohol. Your liver then gets more time to process the booze lowering your blood alcohol concentration and reducing the impact of it.

Many cocktails, wines and spirits have strong flavours that can also overwhelm our taste buds, so sipping water between drinks keeps our palate fresh so we can better enjoy the delicious aromas and flavours.

Bring on the zebras and probably the only stripes that will look good on everybody.

AF Drinks

Sparkling Red

$24.95

Served chilled, this sparkling red presented in a capped bottle is full of fruity and ripe red berries. It’s like an easy drinking Spanish red. At zero alcohol, AF mimics the buzzy feeling of wine on your palate with ‘Afterglow’ – its secret mix of herbs and spices. Importantly, because it’s constructed for flavour and isn’t de-alcoholised wine, it’s got more taste than many zero ‘wine’ options.

Pegasus Bay

Aged Release Riesling 2014

Waipara

$49

Another bonus of zebra striping: drinking less means we can justify (and afford) to drink better. So rather than multiple glasses of average wine with a dinner out, we can have one magnificent one. And if I had to pick a favourite child, it would be an aged riesling and Pegasus Bay do the best. My un-tired taste buds will enjoy its warm citrus, red apples, roasted peach and mānuka honey flavours.

NON

Lemon Marmalade and Hibiscus

$39

You will not notice the alcohol missing in NON’s range of drinks. This one is packed full of lemon verbena, hibiscus, liquorice root and citrus.