Ingredients

All natural, no added sugar, chosen with precision and care

 

 

Cyder Vinegar

As long as there has been yeast, and as long as that yeast has fermented sugars to alcohol, there have been tiny bacteria that will ferment the alcohol into vinegar. A staple of the ancients and first prescribed as a medicine by Hippocrates in 400BC, vinegar has been intertwined with humans for millenia There is much folklore, and many myths and legends surrounding vinegar, but the most enigmatic of them all is cyder vinegar. It has a soft and gentle flavour and is the most versatile. We love it as a base to our shrubs, it is as adaptable and mellifluous as the shrubs themselves, complementing our fruit and botanical flavours and giving a vital sour backnote. It is the acid balance of the cyder vinegar that gives drinkability and diuretic characteristics more often associated with alcohol.

 

 

Apples

Possibly the most ubiquitous fruit on the planet; bar the tropics and the poles they are found everywhere. And yet, the fruit that allegedly tempted Adam in Genesis (the actual culprit was likely pomegranate - possibly even a magic mushroom), has its origins in a most unexpected place - Kazakhstan. The apple forests of the Tien Shan mountains reach up to the outskirts of the old capital Almaty - Mother Apple in Kazakh - and it was Almaty's strategic location on the Silk Road that led to its steady reach into Europe and beyond as well as east in to China. A highly adaptable and biologically unusual genome meant any one of its seeds could make a home in the ground it found itself. From this journey has sprung thousands and thousands of different varieties, and yet all of them will fall into one of 3 basic types - sweet - eaters, sour - cookers, and astringent - 'cyders'. We use all 3 in our shrubs, particularly the ciders, their tannins give a bitter and drying astringency which adds structure much the same as many red wines do. The main varieties we use of each are Cox, Bramley and Dabinett.

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