By Dash Lilley, co-founder of Three Spirit
More and more people are choosing to drink less or stop drinking altogether, but shouldn't there be an alternative that can help get you into the right vibe to socialise or wind down? That’s where botanical alchemy comes in.
Three Spirit are all about active compounds, so this means some methods of extraction are better than others depending on the plant. For instance, we use dry powdered extracts of high-grade cacao in Social Elixir, which allows us to extract the maximum amount of theobromine, the active compound in the plant that is of most interest to us. Theobromine is an incredible compound that can promote positive mood and energy, so we like it very much. In other cases, we use vegetable glycerine to extract the desired properties from plants. This is an amazing method for pulling colour and flavour from the raw material and also has the benefit of adding natural sweetness with no addition of sugar
I like to work with both mainstream ingredient suppliers and the smaller artisan producers as they are good at different things. But when we work with the smaller guys, we can create bespoke ingredients that are made to the exact specification that we need. For instance, we source our guayusa from small native farming communities in Ecuador who grow the magic caffeinated leaf under the canopy of the rainforest, meaning that their cultivation methods are in harmony with the surrounding habitat that is so very rich in flora and fauna.
Alchemy is a goal and inspiration at Three Spirit; to create something that has not existed before.
