Four brands have captured the category in AI — and the gap is structural, not coincidental
Key Findings
Overall Findings
Gemini is the highest-volume platform overall (4,072 total brand mentions), followed by Claude (3,196), ChatGPT (2,915), and Perplexity (2,630). Claude is the primary blind spot for newer craft brands. Perplexity is a differentiator for DTC-forward brands whose recent web presence has not yet been absorbed by training-data models.
| Brand | ChatGPT | Claude | Gemini | Perplexity | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lyre's | 179 | 659 | 793 | 200 | 1,831 |
| Seedlip | 621 | 542 | 508 | 87 | 1,758 |
| Ritual Zero Proof | 346 | 420 | 626 | 293 | 1,685 |
| Monday | 344 | 401 | 327 | 50 | 1,122 |
| Ghia | 76 | 144 | 351 | 205 | 776 |
| Kin Euphorics | 183 | 117 | 159 | 72 | 531 |
| Three Spirit | 163 | 34 | 113 | 110 | 420 |
| Free Spirits | 90 | 30 | 67 | 154 | 341 |
| Pentire | 135 | 34 | 77 | 35 | 281 |
| Everleaf | 84 | 46 | 120 | 13 | 263 |
| ISH Spirits | 125 | 0 | 3 | 133 | 261 |
| Curious Elixirs | 28 | 79 | 65 | 42 | 214 |
| Aplós | 7 | 39 | 8 | 102 | 156 |
| Spiritless Kentucky 74 | 19 | 41 | 63 | 31 | 154 |
| Wilfred's | 4 | 16 | 94 | 38 | 152 |
| CleanCo | 7 | 77 | 22 | 38 | 144 |
| Ceder's | 69 | 50 | 4 | 6 | 129 |
| Figlia | 7 | 1 | 32 | 83 | 123 |
| De Soi | 6 | 7 | 12 | 88 | 113 |
| Aecorn | 100 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 111 |
Platform Concentration Gaps
Several brands surface exclusively on Perplexity — active recent press and DTC content that has not yet accumulated enough indexed depth to register in training-data models. ISH Spirits is the starkest single-platform gap in the audit.
| Brand | Other Platform Mentions | Gap Platform | Gap Mentions |
|---|---|---|---|
| ISH Spirits | 258 | Claude | 0 |
| Aecorn | 111 | Gemini | 0 |
| Aecorn | 111 | Perplexity | 0 |
| Pink London Spirit | 73 | ChatGPT · Claude | 0 |
| Lapo's | 63 | ChatGPT · Claude · Gemini | 0 |
| Wilderton | 50 | ChatGPT | 0 |
| Crodino | 49 | Perplexity | 0 |
| Mingle Mocktails | 47 | ChatGPT | 0 |
| Fluère | 46 | Perplexity | 0 |
| Surely | 42 | Perplexity | 0 |
| Little Saints | 25 | ChatGPT · Claude · Gemini | 0 |
| Leilo | 28 | ChatGPT · Claude · Gemini | 0 |
| Sentia | 26 | ChatGPT · Claude · Gemini | 0 |
Cluster Analysis
Mindful drinking prompts do not return a single consistent brand set. Five purchase-intent clusters reveal meaningfully different competitive landscapes — with the same four brands dominating every cluster, and the rest of the field fighting for the remaining space.
Seedlip leads — its positioning as a distilled non-alcoholic spirit with complex botanical ingredients maps cleanly to health-conscious and sober-curious language AI models have ingested at scale. Three Spirit earns its highest cluster performance here (87 mentions), driven by its functional adaptogen and botanical narrative. Brands with explicit gut health, adaptogen, or clean-ingredient content perform above their overall average in this cluster.
Ghia makes its strongest cluster appearance here (166 mentions), consistent with its brand identity as a sophisticated aperitivo for social settings. Lyre's takes the cluster lead — its wide SKU range covering spirit-for-spirit substitutes gives it natural breadth across occasion-based queries. Brands that have invested in cocktail content, recipe publishing, and editorial coverage around entertaining earn disproportionate returns in this cluster.
Seedlip reclaims the top position at 406 mentions — its origin story as the first modern distilled non-alcoholic spirit and its emphasis on botanical complexity has been extensively documented in food and beverage media. Wilfred's, Everleaf, and Pentire — all botanically-led brands with distinct flavor profiles — earn their best relative performances here, suggesting that detailed tasting notes and ingredient-level content translate into AI retrieval on flavor queries.
The highest-volume cluster in the audit — Ritual Zero Proof earns 525 mentions here alone. The identity cluster captures queries tied to pregnancy, recovery, athletic performance, sober events, and lifestyle alignment: contexts where brand narrative and community positioning matter as much as product attributes. Kin Euphorics and Curious Elixirs outperform their overall averages in this cluster through community storytelling and lifestyle content that AI systems can attribute and retrieve.
The most locked leaderboard in the audit — the top five are identical to the overall top five, in nearly the same order. This signals that retail presence and distribution breadth drive AI training signal: brands stocked at Whole Foods, Total Wine, and major DTC platforms have generated enough indexed retail coverage to dominate purchase-intent queries. Emerging brands with limited retail footprint score near zero here regardless of their performance in other clusters. Retail placement is not just a sales channel — for AI visibility purposes, it is a content generation engine. A brand stocked at Whole Foods appears in Whole Foods editorial features, regional guides, gifting roundups, and retailer-specific review sites. Each placement creates a citation that AI models can retrieve.
What Drives AI Visibility in Mindful Drinking
The brands that surface consistently across all four AI platforms have done one thing in common: they have generated indexed, attributable, long-form content that AI models can retrieve when a consumer asks a purchase-intent question. The absence of that content — not the absence of brand awareness — is what produces a zero on Claude or a near-zero on ChatGPT.
Brands that defined the category in media own the category in AI. Seedlip and Lyre's were among the first non-alcoholic spirits brands to receive serious editorial treatment — in food and beverage publications, mainstream lifestyle media, and bartender-facing trade press. That early coverage created a content foundation that AI models continue to draw from years later.
When a model is asked about non-alcoholic spirits, it retrieves from the body of indexed content where the category was first explained, reviewed, and recommended. The brands that appear in that foundational content are the brands that surface today.
Breadth of product range expands the number of queries a brand can answer. Lyre's leads the overall audit in part because it produces spirit-for-spirit substitutes — a non-alcoholic gin, rum, whiskey, amaretti, and more. Each SKU creates a distinct content surface: a gin-alternative query, a whiskey-alternative query, a cocktail recipe that calls for a specific spirit type.
Brands with a single hero product are limited to the queries that product can answer. Brands with a range can surface across the full spectrum of purchase-intent questions.
Brands with a clear cultural identity generate content that AI can attribute and retrieve. Kin Euphorics and Curious Elixirs outperform their retail footprint in identity-cluster queries. Both brands have invested in community storytelling — founder narratives, sober-curious lifestyle content, and editorial partnerships that frame the product within a broader cultural movement.
AI models retrieve this framing when identity-driven queries are asked: who is this for, what does it say about the person drinking it, how does it fit into a wellness or sober-curious lifestyle.
Aplós earns 102 of its 156 total mentions on Perplexity. Figlia earns 83 of 123 on Perplexity. These are not weak brands — they are brands with active recent content that Perplexity's live retrieval captures but training-data models have not yet absorbed. Perplexity performance today is a proxy for where a brand's AI visibility could be in 12 to 18 months — if the content investment continues.
What Mindful Drinking Brands Can Do With This
The visibility gaps in this audit are content gaps — not reputation gaps, not distribution gaps, not product quality gaps. The brands that surface consistently across all four AI platforms have generated indexed, attributable, long-form content that AI models can retrieve when a consumer asks a purchase-intent question.
Three content types move the needle most directly. Origin and craft narratives — detailed, third-party-published accounts of how the product is made, what ingredients are used, and what differentiates it from competitors — drive Taste & Craft cluster performance. Occasion and recipe content — specific, cocktail-forward content placing the product in named social contexts — drives Occasion & Entertaining retrieval. Retailer and channel coverage — press around Whole Foods placement, Total Wine listing, or major DTC milestone — generates the indexed retail content that controls Retail & Discovery performance.
Research from KDD 2024 found that generative engine optimization produces the largest visibility gains for lower-ranked sources — sites ranked fifth in traditional search saw up to 115% improvement in AI citation frequency. The window for closing the gap on the established four is open, and the cost of entry is content investment, not media spend. Training data accumulates over time, and the brands investing now are the ones AI will cite in 2027.
About This Research
This report is part of an ongoing series examining AI recommendation patterns across premium food, beverage, and hospitality categories. Ally Kiel Consulting publishes original audit data to help founders and operators understand how AI systems currently classify and recommend their brands — and what drives the gaps.
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