What Lewis Hamilton Actually Drinks

By Vim, Editor of 12×75. Last reviewed: July 2026. Almave is a non-alcoholic agave spirit. It is not tequila, and this piece explains at length why it legally cannot be.

Lewis Hamilton has sprayed more champagne than almost any human being alive.

More than a hundred Grand Prix wins. Over two hundred podiums. Three decades of jeroboams the size of a toddler, uncorked over his own head on a metal step in front of a hundred million people. He once caught Vladimir Putin in the crossfire at Sochi, which is a sentence I never expected to type on a drinks website.

He has not swallowed a drop of it in years.

This is the strangest celebrity drinks story going, and almost nobody tells it properly. The man who quietly stopped drinking then went and founded a spirits brand. Not an endorsement. Not a name on a label. A genuine, distilled, made-in-Jalisco agave spirit, developed with one of the most respected distillers in Mexico, that is now stocked in Target and part-owned by the second biggest drinks company on earth.

And it contains no alcohol whatsoever. Pour yourself something. Anything. That is rather the point.

Let us answer the question in the headline before we do anything clever with it.

Water, first thing, before anything else. He has described a morning that begins with water, a stretch and a few minutes of getting his head straight, and only then breakfast, which is usually oatmeal or a smoothie. He has been fully plant-based since around 2017, and he told the Independent, memorably, that your gut is your second brain.

Then, for years, the answer to “what is Lewis drinking” was: ginger ale. He told Forbes that he stopped drinking for a year, felt great, and then found himself sitting in restaurants with all his friends drinking and him nursing a ginger ale like a designated driver at his own life.

Today, per that same interview, the answer is his own product. He sips Almave Ámbar neat. He mixes Almave Blanco into a margarita. He is, by his own admission, still working out what to do with the third one, which is smoky and which he has cheerfully confessed is not really his thing.

A seven-time world champion who launched a mezcal alternative and then told a Forbes journalist that he does not especially like mezcal is, I would argue, more trustworthy than a hundred celebrities telling you their tequila is the smoothest they have ever tasted.

The account Hamilton gave Vogue in late 2023 is worth reading slowly, because it is not the usual wellness pamphlet.

He said he began drinking at sixteen. He said the after-effects would linger for three or four days, which for a man whose profession involves pulling five lateral g while making decisions at 200mph is not a hangover, it is a performance clause. He talked about the effect on his mental health, and was blunt that alcohol did not help. He said that since stopping he sleeps better, thinks more clearly, and can still get up at five in the morning.

And crucially, he did not announce a lifelong vow. He said he did not know if he would drink again. Reports since have counted his abstinence in years rather than months.

There is a widely repeated bit of lore, from an earlier era, that Hamilton reassessed his lifestyle after writing off a Pagani Zonda in 2015, an episode he later attributed to fatigue. Treat that one as the internet’s favorite tidy narrative rather than a documented cause. The version he tells himself is duller and more convincing: he was chasing the last one percent, and the last one percent was in the bottle he was not drinking.

Almave launched in October 2023. The name folds alma, Spanish for soul, into agave. It is made in the highlands of Los Altos, Jalisco, from the same blue Weber agave that becomes tequila, milled and distilled in copper pots by people who have been making tequila for decades.

It is still not tequila, and cannot ever be. Tequila is a protected Mexican denomination, policed by the CRT, and one of the requirements is that it be, you know, alcohol. Almave is legally a blue agave spirit. The brand is unusually honest about this, and says so on its own website rather than hiding behind “tequila-style”.

The clever bit that nobody explains

Here is the technical trick, and it is genuinely interesting once you stop and think about it. Making tequila runs like this. Almave stops one step short.

Fermentation is the only step where yeast turns sugar into alcohol. Remove it and you have every other part of tequila-making, minus the ethanol.

As Pernod Ricard describes it, the brand uses the same raw material in the same place and simply skips the step where the liquid becomes alcohol.

Which raises the obvious question a drinks writer is contractually obliged to ask: what exactly are you distilling, then? If there is no ethanol, distillation is not concentrating alcohol. It is pulling volatile aromatic compounds out of cooked agave and leaving the sugar and water behind. You are running a still as an aroma extractor rather than a proof engine. Saldaña’s own framing to Forbes was refreshingly unspun: Almave does not taste exactly like tequila or mezcal, but it has the flavors.

That is a materially different proposition from almost every other non-alcoholic spirit on the shelf, most of which are botanical infusions in flavored water with a bit of chilli extract for burn. Whether it justifies thirty dollars is Part seven’s problem.

The man doing the actual work

Every celebrity drinks brand lives or dies on who is standing next to the celebrity. Look who is standing next to this one.

If a celebrity had rung me and asked who to build a non-alcoholic agave spirit with, I would have given them a list of one name. Hamilton got him. That is either extraordinary luck or, more likely, evidence that Hamilton actually did his homework, which the interviews suggest he did.

The range

Prices vary by retailer and have moved since launch. Humo’s agave is harvested at the foot of the Popocatépetl volcano in Puebla, which is the single most cinematic sentence in the entire non-alcoholic category.

The awards are real, for whatever awards are worth: Best Non-Alc Spirit Brand at the 2025 Rolling Stone Spirit Awards, best non-alcoholic agave spirit of 2025 at the New York International Spirits Competition, and a BevNET spirits award in its launch year.

In August 2024, less than a year after launch, Pernod Ricard acquired a minority stake in Almave. Terms undisclosed, as ever. Alexandre Ricard described it as sitting at the intersection of three accelerating trends: tequila, non-alcoholic, and the desire for authenticity.

Now enjoy the symmetry. Pernod Ricard is the company that bought Avión, the tequila built by the same operators who later built The Rock’s Teremana. The French giant has now bought into the tequila made by a celebrity, and the not-tequila made by a celebrity who stopped drinking tequila. It also bought Ritual Zero Proof, the best-selling non-alcoholic spirits brand in America, one month later, and launched Beefeater 0.0 and Seagram’s 0.0. In April 2025 it sold off its entire international wine portfolio, Jacob’s Creek and Campo Viejo included, to concentrate on premium spirits and no-alcohol.

The room, in numbers

• IWSR forecasts no-alcohol to reach 18 billion servings by 2029. That is two for every person on the planet, which frankly seems restrained.
• Health is the driver. 40% of no-alcohol spirits buyers cite a healthy lifestyle choice, versus 26% for trendier “alcohol adjacent” functional drinks.
• When Pernod invested, the UK was up 17%, and IWSR flagged no-alcohol tequila specifically as the obvious white space.
• Meanwhile wine is down 2.4%, beer down 0.2%, and the WHO puts global consumption down 12% between 2010 and 2022.

In February 2026, Almave Blanco landed in Target stores nationwide at $29.99, which for a non-alcoholic brand is the moment you stop being a curiosity and start being a business. Hamilton’s stake has never been disclosed. Neither has the brand’s valuation, and I would treat any figure you see quoted as fiction until somebody files something.

Now for the delicious part. Formula 1 is soaked in booze. Not metaphorically. Literally, every fortnight, on television, by contractual obligation.

Moët & Chandon supplied the podium from 1966, the longest such deal in the sport’s history. Mumm took over in 2000, then Chandon, then Carbon, then Ferrari Trento from 2021, the Italian Trentodoc house whose jeroboams Hamilton sprayed for four seasons, including the one prepared specially for his hundredth win at Sochi. From 2025, as part of a reported billion-dollar LVMH deal, Moët is back on the top step.

Heineken has been F1’s official global beer partner for a decade and just renewed again. Its name is on the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Its “When You Drive, Never Drink” campaign is one of the great pieces of corporate having-it-both-ways in modern sport, and to be fair to them, Heineken 0.0 is now the thing they actually push at the circuit.

The sport already knows how to do this without alcohol, incidentally. At the Saudi, Bahraini, Qatari and Emirati races, drivers spray a non-alcoholic rose water, in branded bottles, and the celebration survives entirely intact. Nobody complains. Nobody notices.

If you are a sponsorship executive reading this on a Friday afternoon, you are welcome.

Any piece that presents Hamilton as an infallible operator is lying to you, so here is the other ledger.

Neat Burger launched in 2019, weeks after Hamilton went vegan. He was an early backer. Leonardo DiCaprio and the goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois came in later. The chain raised over $25 million and was valued at $100 million in 2023. At its peak it ran eight London sites plus Milan and New York.

Two things need saying, in the interests of not being a tabloid. First, it was a solvent liquidation: the shareholders’ position was that the company could pay its debts in full. Second, UK hospitality has been a bloodbath. Over 1,400 restaurants shut in a single twelve-month stretch, and vegan and non-vegan alike went down. Neat Burger did not die because plant-based food is a fad, per the closure reporting. It died because it was a venture-funded chain paying central London rents.

But it does tell you something useful. Hamilton’s name did not save a restaurant chain. What saves a drinks brand is not the name either. It is Iván Saldaña, a copper pot still, and Pernod Ricard’s route to market.

Let us be adults about non-alcoholic spirits for a moment. Nothing in this category tastes like the alcoholic thing, because ethanol is not a flavor, it is a solvent, a texture and a warmth. Take it out and you lose the body, the length and the burn all at once. Anybody who tells you their no-alc tequila is indistinguishable from Blanco is either lying or has never had good Blanco. I have been rude about this category before in the Seedlip versus Ritual comparison, and I stand by most of it.

Judged fairly, on its own terms, here is the verdict.

The price is the argument. Thirty dollars for a bottle you cannot get drunk on is a lot, and I will not pretend otherwise. The counter is that a bottle of Almave makes about the same number of drinks as a bottle of tequila, and a decent tequila is $30 too. What you are not paying for is duty and excise, which is precisely why the margins in this category are so appetizing and why Pernod Ricard is circling it like a shark at a swimming gala. If you want the real thing instead, the best tequila guide and best tequila for margaritas are next door.

And pour it into a proper glass. Sounds absurd for a drink with no alcohol, but with nothing to warm the aromatics off the surface you need all the help the glassware can give you. A copita, not a tumbler.

Set Almave next to the other celebrity agave brands and the contrast is instructive.

Clooney sold. Johnson says he never will. Hamilton has not been asked, because his brand is four years old and the exits in no-alcohol have barely started.

Casamigos and Teremana both sold you access. Access to a lifestyle, a beach house, a work ethic. They are both, at bottom, tequila you buy because of who is on the poster.

Almave sells you an excuse. It exists because the hardest thing about not drinking is not the drink, it is the twenty minutes at the table when everyone else is ordering. Hamilton did not identify a flavor gap. He identified a social gap, from the inside, while sat there with a ginger ale, and then hired a biochemist to fill it.

That is why it will probably outlast half the celebrity tequilas on the shelf. It is also, I suspect, why Pernod Ricard, currently in reported merger discussions with Brown-Forman and busily selling its wine business, took a minority slice rather than the whole thing. Minority stakes are what you buy when you want the option and not the risk. Watch that stake. If it goes majority, you will know the category has arrived.

Does Lewis Hamilton drink alcohol?

No, not for several years. He told Vogue in late 2023 that he had stopped, that he began drinking at sixteen, that hangovers left him suffering for three or four days, and that he did not know whether he would drink again. He has never framed it as a lifelong vow. His drink of choice, when he did drink, was tequila.

What is Almave?

Almave is a non-alcoholic blue agave spirit co-founded in 2023 by Lewis Hamilton and Dr Iván Saldaña of Casa Lumbre, with investment firm Copper. It is made in the highlands of Jalisco from the same blue Weber agave used for tequila, cooked and distilled in copper pots, but skipping fermentation, the stage at which alcohol is created. There are three expressions: Ámbar, Blanco and Humo.

Is Almave tequila?

No. Tequila is a protected Mexican denomination regulated by the CRT, and an alcohol-free product cannot be called tequila. Almave is legally a blue agave spirit. The brand states this openly rather than implying otherwise.

Who owns Almave?

It was co-founded by Lewis Hamilton, Mexican spirits incubator Casa Lumbre and the investment firm Copper. In August 2024 Pernod Ricard acquired a minority stake. Terms were not disclosed, and Hamilton’s individual percentage has never been made public.

How much does Almave cost?

Roughly $30 to $40 a bottle in the US depending on expression and retailer. Almave Blanco arrived in Target stores nationwide in February 2026 at $29.99. Ámbar and Humo sit a few dollars higher.

Does Almave taste like tequila?

Not exactly, and its own master distiller says so. It carries genuine cooked agave flavor because it is made from real distilled agave rather than a botanical infusion, but it lacks the warmth, weight and length that ethanol provides. It performs best in a margarita, where lime, salt and dilution do the work alcohol used to.

Who is Iván Saldaña?

A Mexican botanist with a PhD in biochemistry and Almave’s master distiller. He was one of the original founders of Tequila Milagro, created Montelobos mezcal and Ancho Reyes chilli liqueur, and co-founded Casa Lumbre, the incubator behind Ojo de Tigre and Abasolo. He is the reason Almave is taken seriously by people who take agave seriously.

What happened to Neat Burger?

The vegan chain Hamilton backed in 2019, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Thibaut Courtois, closed its last UK restaurants in April 2025 and entered liquidation in July 2025. It had raised over $25m and posted a £7.86m loss in 2022. The liquidation was solvent, and it came during the worst period for UK hospitality in a decade, with over 1,400 restaurants closing in a single year.

Is Almave a Formula 1 sponsor?

Not as far as we can establish. F1’s official global beer partner is Heineken, which promotes Heineken 0.0, and the podium bottle from 2025 is Moët & Chandon, following Ferrari Trento’s four-year run. At races in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE, drivers spray a non-alcoholic rose water instead.

What does Lewis Hamilton eat and drink day to day?

He has been plant-based since around 2017. He has described starting the day with water, a stretch and a moment to clear his head, followed by oatmeal or a smoothie, and has named a poke bowl with marinated tofu, quinoa, chickpeas and edamame as a favorite high-protein meal. Socially, he now drinks his own Almave, having spent a long stretch on ginger ale.

How this was reported

Hamilton’s own words are drawn from published interviews where possible. No valuation is asserted for Almave because none has been disclosed. Sources, in full:

Hamilton in his own words: Forbes, GPblog on the Vogue interview, Race News, Entrepreneur, WWD, The Hollywood Reporter.

Almave and Casa Lumbre: Almave, launch release, Humo release, BevNET, Global Drinks Intel, Motorsport.com on the Target deal.

Pernod Ricard: Pernod Ricard, Business Wire, BeverageDaily, FoodBev.

The no-alcohol category: IWSR, The Spirits Business, Food Ingredients First, Consejo Regulador del Tequila.

F1 and alcohol: Autosport on the podium, Autosport on Moët, Motorsport.com on Ferrari Trento, Ferrari Trento, Formula 1 partners, The Drinks Business on Heineken, Heineken newsroom, Robb Report.

Neat Burger: The Caterer, Crash.net, Green Queen, Plant Based News, Motorsport.com, PlanetF1.