Shrubs

A shrub is a fruit-and-vinegar syrup: fruit for brightness, sugar for body, vinegar for lift, and time for the sort of quiet improvement usually associated with well-read dogs and unusually patient gardeners.

The idea is old and belongs to the same great family as sharbat, sherbet, syrup, cordial and drinking vinegar. Before refrigeration, people needed ways to preserve fruit when it was at its best. Sugar helped. Vinegar helped. So did the faint but persistent human belief that almost anything becomes more interesting if you can pour it into a glass over ice.

Across Persia, the Ottoman world, Britain, the Caribbean and colonial America, people took these sweetened, acidulated drinks and used them to enhance the flavour of their food and drinks. Some were served still. Some were mixed with water. Some found their way into smuggled rum casks to disguise the flavour of mistreated spirits. 

Treguddick shrubs belong to that line: historic in idea, Cornish in character, but made for the modern glass. We take real fruit, British sugar, carefully chosen botanicals, and just enough vinegar-sharpness to make sparkling water look as if it has finally discovered a purpose in life.

Pour a measure over ice, add sparkling water, tonic or ginger ale, and you have a bold, adult, 0% ABV drink in seconds.