This San Diego brand is reinventing liqueurs with low-sugar cocktails in mind

It’s not too far-fetched for someone to say that they enjoy a good cocktail and also that they like to be mindful of their sugar intake; both can be true. For Nicole Slone, however, she wanted those two elements in the same experience — and she was struggling to find what she was seeking. That desire set Slone on a fast track from local escrow officer to accidental beverage entrepreneur and creator of Above Board liqueurs.

“I always felt a little deflated that when I would go out and want to enjoy one of these [cocktails], none of them aligned with my health goals, which consist of avoiding sugar as much as possible,” she says. “Anytime the bartender tried to make me a sugarless version of a craft cocktail, I was always just as disappointed receiving it as they were irritated trying to make it.”

She didn’t find fault with the bartender, but realized that the ingredients she preferred simply weren’t available. So, she set out to make them herself, testing various natural sugar replacements as she sought to craft sugar-free alternatives to simple syrup. “It was around the time that I was making a coffee version of a syrup that I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to put this in alcohol. Why wouldn’t I just put alcohol in it?’ So to some degree, I innocently stumbled into the alcohol industry,” says Slone. With the assistance of a food scientist, she honed her syrups and added a gluten-free, neutral grain spirit, “and what came out the other side is Above Board,” she says. 

By any measure, the San Diego-based Above Board’s growth has been brisk since a 2023 soft launch; distribution already includes retail — Ralphs, Cardiff Seaside Market, and Total Wine & More — and behind the bar at local destinations such as Brigantine, Humphreys, and all California Hyatt properties. The line of zero- and low-sugar liqueurs includes Orange, Coffee, and Cream, mirroring brand-name liqueurs that marry well with popular spirits and empowering bartenders and mixologists to create time-honored staples and unique craft cocktails without all the sugar. Above Board also offers an alcohol-free simple syrup, and a fourth liqueur akin to Aperol is forthcoming. 

Notably, the Above Board versions of these liqueurs are equivalent in alcohol-by-volume (ABV) levels to their traditional counterparts, allowing seamless substitution in any cocktail. “We matched what is traditional because…we didn’t want people have to overthink what they’re pouring, and we certainly didn’t want restaurants and bars to have any liability around that as well if they’re accustomed to pouring liqueurs in a certain manner for cocktails,” says Slone, who helms Above Board as CEO while her husband, Brent, is CFO.

What’s not traditional: Due to the reduced — or altogether absent — sugar content (the primary sweetener used is allulose, a naturally occurring sugar derived from such sources as raisins and figs), the liqueurs can claim to be keto- and diabetic-friendly, to the point that Slone says she was invited to sample Above Board at a fundraiser for a diabetes foundation here in San Diego. “We want full transparency. We have nutritional panels on the side of our bottles, which is unheard of in this space. I think people should know what they’re putting in their bodies and how it’s going to affect them and make decisions accordingly,” says Slone. “That’s why we called ourselves Above Board.” drinkaboveboard.com