The Making of Berry

It always looks easier from the outside :)

Yesterday, we launched our newest Ghia Apéritif, Berry! I am so excited to introduce it to the world! If you’ve placed an order in the last 24 hours, thank you! Whenever we launch a new addition to the Ghia family, there’s a sense of excitement and pride, but this one feels particularly special - because it was so hard to get right. 

Berry is our first foray into non-bitter drinks. We are a company whose mission is to make an inclusive dinner table, and while I love an Italian amaro, with roughly only 25% of American diners considering their palates bitter, I knew from the beginning I had my work cut out for me. I always aim to create flavors that are missing from non-alc mixology, and can be polarizing to some but certain people will absolutely love. Our Original Ghia bitter is like that. I think our ability to dive head first into ‘niche’ is what makes Ghia most interesting. If we aim to have flavors that everyone loves, they just end up diluted with a lot of sugar (or worse, stevia!), something non-alc already gets a bad rap for. 

Berry was heavily inspired by the tart, earthy flavors wine lovers are drawn to. Tannins are a tasting note crucially absent from the NA universe, and an element I knew would be essential to this drink. In all of the zero proof wines I’ve tried, no one has yet to recreate that stringent but velvety taste that matches a glass of lambrusco. And for the first 18 months, we tasted a lot of really weird drinks before landing on this recipe (it turns out, a little fermented jasmine tea and orange blossom were the key to adding depth and balance to the somewhat more common and unilateral berries).

My other influence was my grandmother's love for a splash of Creme de Cassis in her champagne - and the delight of a Kir Royal in her hand and a big smile on her face when we showed up at her house. She would have loved this drink.

Le Spritz lovers will be surprised to hear our bottle is still almost 40% of our business. It's our hero by far, and my first child! It was really hard making a drink I loved as much as our Original. I’m especially grateful for my team who pulled it off and was patient with me over the last 2.5 years - countless flavor tweaks and design decisions - we even refined the formula further since our “little Berry” samples went out a month ago. 

We thought about designing a whole new bottle (it will happen next year). Then, an entire truck of our strawberry juice somehow went missing, delaying production countless times. The biggest setback was the caps. The electric purple tops were not in my original idea. The caps are made in Portugal out of the most sustainable cork there is (that’s why they break sometimes), something very important to me. They were supposed to be navy blue, and eventually will be. I was forced with the decision to launch the bottle slightly skewed from what I had pictured, or push the launch back until after the holidays. 

I am a neurotic perfectionist, sticking to my gut and vision, unapologetically at times. But, over the last five years as a professional Spritz maker, I’ve also learned to know when to push and when to pull. Much to my surprise, the purple caps are a hit. They will turn darker in the Spring because I am who I am :). 

One of the best parts of my day is seeing Ghia tagged at peoples dinner tables around the world. You all are so creative and generous - I speak for the whole Ghia team when I say we feel lucky to be serving you. It is my dream job, and yesterday was another highlight in the somewhat steep and very sinuous path to building my dream company.

As always, my inbox is open. 

Happiest of holidays!

Melanie

PS: if you feel so inclined to try Berry, subscribers here get 15% off with the code NIGHTSHADE. I like mine a little stronger than advised - one part Berry, 2 parts sparkling water or yuzu tonic.