Introducing Cocktail Elements – a convenient, sustainable way to garnish home cocktails
A scientific discovery in how to expertly finesse your cocktail with fresh, vibrant flavours and none of the waste
Linden Leaf, an award-winning, flavour-led spirits company founded by three scientists in Cambridge, has created a revolutionary way to garnish your cocktail, with a convenient atomiser that harnesses all the flavour of fresh, organic fruit with none of the waste or faff.
Linden Leaf’s Cocktail Elements is a range of organic, molecular essence atomisers that spray the natural essences of fresh fruit to provide a professional, precise finishing touch to your cocktail, whether you’re making a Martini, an Old Fashioned or a simple G&T.
Launching first to budding home cocktail enthusiasts with three expressions, Lemon, Lime and Orange, the scientific minds at LindenLeaf have used an entirely different approach to flavour discovery by identifying the exact molecules responsible for the perfect burst of fresh flavour to ensure a consistent, flavourful spray for each serve.
This award-winning distiller of spirits has explored the science of flavour and mapped an extensive flavour atlas that they are now applying to innovate cocktail making.
Made using the very finest, organic produce from around the world, Cocktail Elements are distilled in specially selected organic grain alcohol and so avoids the bitter aftertaste sometimes associated with oil-based atomisers.
Cocktail Elements are produced using a proprietary, super-chilled distillation technology tuned at a molecular level, the hyper-concentrated extracts deliver the freshest, just-cut fragrance of the finest organic fruit and herbs. These organically certified, natural atomised sprays deliver a fresh burst of fragrance to cocktails and simple serves.
Sustainable, organic and crafted to an incredibly high quality, the proprietary molecular extraction process is incredibly efficient, using only a few fruit to produce a spray that can garnish over 80 drinks. Each botanical is chosen carefully on the basis of its taste and smell and is harvested at the peak of its season when flavours are at their best.
This was no mad scientist, trial-and-error production, as Matthew Webster, co-founder of Linden Leaf can attest. “At Linden Leaf, we all share a passion for understanding flavour. It all starts with finding the very best ingredients for what you want, the lemons with the strongest, most complex scent in their zests. That’s not only about choosing which variety of lemon to use, but also the producer who makes them and the season they’re picked—all those make a difference.
“Then we optimise the extraction, looking at every technology available to pull the very best smells and flavours from each ingredient. We are lucky to have access to the latest modern analysis equipment, which can help us learn exactly which molecules are in each extract, and even how each individual molecule smells.
“We’re all from scientific backgrounds and very used to dealing with huge data sets, in a way probably most craft spirits producers aren’t. We love and respect the long tradition of distillation and the artistry of blending, and our technology helps us build on that: honing the flavours with a precision and consistency that just haven’t been possible before.
“We’ve done a huge crowd testing programme spanning thousands and thousands of consumer tastings. From this, we have built a flavour atlas which maps out how different people perceive the smell and flavour of each molecule, as well as how those flavours interact.
“This lets us ensure that the botanical flavour we select is as characteristic and appealing as possible while tasting as fresh as the moment it was first zested. For example, with the orange essence, we’ve pulled out the specific molecules that give the really rich deep, warm orangey-ness that you get when you twist zest from a super-ripe orange: the scent and flavour that people want when they’re adding orange to a cocktail.”
Max Venning, co-founder of Three Sheets, consistently one of the UK’s top bars and currently #16 in World’s 50 Best Bar list, comments: “We like simple, elegant drinks with clean flavours—it needs to be simple, it needs to be delicious and it needs to be easy for the consumer to enjoy. Linden Leaf excites me, as they are these three scientists from Cambridge who are really into food and drink and they’re applying that scientific knowledge onto the extraction of flavours.
“The Cocktail Elements series really inspires me. They are taking products from their peak season, extracting exactly the flavours we want from them and then that’s available all year round in an atomiser we can spray on top of drinks. Lemons will change from fruit to fruit, but also will change quite dramatically from week to week. Cocktail Elements gives us absolute consistency over a long-time frame to make sure we get exactly the same drink every single time. The sprays are so special because the hyper concentrated flavour means that we’ve got an exact replica of peak season fruit for 12 months a year.”
Linden Leaf Cocktail Elements Orange, Lime and Lemon are available in 20ml format from TheWhiskyExchange for £9.95.